


Bleeding knuckles.

by merhoran



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alcohol, Drama, Drugs, F/M, Gay, Gay Sex, London, M/M, Romance, Sex, Slash, Underground, Violence, zarry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-16
Updated: 2013-10-06
Packaged: 2017-12-26 19:01:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 40,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/969190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merhoran/pseuds/merhoran
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zayn smiled wildly and moved one hand quickly to grab the neck of Harry's sweatshirt, pulling him hard against his body and crashing their lips again. They shook from the contact and tasted sugar, they tasted summer in London and everything else seemed stupid; there were no fears, no riots, no poverty, no blood… They took happiness in their hands and gave it a massive bite, letting it gush and stream down their arms.</p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>"The fact of his pulse,</p><p>the way he pulled his body in,</p><p>out of shyness or shame or a desire</p><p>not to disturb the air around him.</p><p>Everyone could see the way his muscles worked,</p><p>the way we look like animals,</p><p>his skin barely keeping him inside.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> In this fanfic, Harry and Zayn are best mates and live in the outsides of London, where drugs and violence are common. Obviously, they end up together, so if you feel offended by gay stuff, violence or drugs, please don't read.  
> I started this out as a Narry fanfic, so maybe you read 'Niall' instead of 'Zayn' in the first chapters, I'm sorry, I tried to change all the names, but I'm not sure I did. If you see it, just ignore it.  
> If you like it, then go for it and PLEEEEASE tell me what you think.  
> BY THE WAY, English isn't my first language, so sorry if i commit any grammar or spelling mistake.

Chapter 1.

Some London manors are ill. If you go there you’ll hear the buildings breathe gasoline and cough its bowels out, tired and mad.  
Some London manors are full of drugs and angry people and poverty and broken hearts. It’s too silent at night, you can see a pair of bright eyes waiting to be rescued, lost souls whining in this concrete jungle as the very big and very, very bad lion stares at them, its jaws and claws shining with the bright, metallic glow of a knife.  
The streets are always wet. Sometimes it’s from the grey rain, but some others it’s from the blood and spitting of a fight. It’s broken Britain. It’s the part of Britain that the rich kids don’t even know that exists, the part of Britain that the politics never listen to.  
The Britain of riots.  
“Run, for fucks sake, run!”  
A big boy was shouting to another one, whose caramel eyes were on fire. He was paralyzed, his white t-shirt turning into red as his friend tried to make him come back, shouting into his ear.  
“Those bloody cops are killing us if we don’t run right now, Zayn.”  
Eventually, the kid run after his friend. They run and run until their lungs were on fire and their legs couldn’t bare their bodies.  
“I feel like I’m breathing alcohol.”  
They finally sat on the backyard of someone’s house as the yells and sirens were still screaming in pain and anger.  
“Shit, are you ok?”  
“Yes, yeah, I’m fine.”  
“You don’t look fine. You are bleeding.”  
The cold brown-eyed boy looked down at his t-shirt and swore.  
“Well, I’ll be fine.” He whispered. “Where’s Tony?”  
The other boy shrugged. His name was Harry.  
“I dunno, but he’s a thirteen years old boy, the cops will do nothing to him.”  
“What? He’s a thirteen years old black boy, the cops will do the shit they want to him. We gotta go back for him.”  
The brown eyed boy, Zayn, got up quickly, but his friend grabbed his wrist.  
“Harry, he’s out there on the fucking riot, all by himself, we need to help him.”  
“We told him not to come with us. We shouldn’t have come ourselves. We’ll go around his house tomorrow morning, I promise, but stay here for now, yeah?” As he said this, Zayn’s jaws clenched. “We’ll wait here for a couple of hours until the cops leave, alright?”  
Zayn made him release his hand and sat next to his friend.  
“And where are we supposed to go afterwards?”  
“Home.” Harry replied heavily, closing his eyes and resting the back of his head on the wall.  
“Very funny, mate.”  
They didn’t come home that night, though. The morning sun woke them up, along with a loud woman and her broomstick. They went to Tony’s house, and his middle sister Cath made them a nice breakfast as she cried silently. Cath was a very pretty girl, only fifteen years old. Tony’s older sister, Annie, was another matter. She was twenty one although she looked thirty one, also very beautiful, but too tired to ever share a smile. Tony’s father left them when he turned eight and, since then, their mother went crazy and depressed, so Annie had to look after her two siblings and her mother.  
“How did you let my brother go there?” She kept asking. “Why did you let my brother go there?”  
Tony was sleeping in his room, alive, but hurt.  
They spent the entire day at Tony’s, helping his sisters and entertaining them with stupid games, and left after dinner. The streets were dead silent; everybody was home, too scared or too hurt to come outside. The riots lasted for almost a week, so it felt weird and scary to be able to walk around the neighbourhood without having trouble.  
The two friends were walking without saying a word until they went separate ways.  
“Can I sleep at yours tonight?”  
Harry feared that question during all their way home.  
“Zayn, it’s Sunday and there is school tomorrow, I don’t know if…”  
Harry’s parents didn’t like Zayn at all.  
“Ok, I get it. See you tomorrow.”  
Zayn didn’t have a family. He was living with his dad at an empty apartment that his brother bought for them with the money of his company in exchange for a quite big and free dose of cocaine each week. Zayn’s dad was a drug dealer: pot, cocaine, LSD, heroine… Everything, to anyone. Zayn’s brother was a businessman that didn’t give a damn about them since their mother died of an overdose their father gave her.  
When he came home his father offered him a sandwich.  
“How are you, big boy? Had a nice weekend?”  
He was too high to even notice the dark red and quite big spot on his son’s t-shirt. Zayn gave the sandwich a bite and smiled.  
“Yes, Dad, I was at the club with Harry last night and I went to Tony’s today.” He answered. It was only half a lie. “What about yours?”  
“Oh, mine was pretty boring. I wish I were your age again, hanging out with my mates, kissing girls, drinking beers… But those days are gone.” He laughed, but his laughter turned into an insane cough. “You are my only mate now, my best mate, big boy.”  
“What about Brad?”  
Zayn’s dad erased the smile on his lips. Sitting there, on that wood chair, too high to open his eyes, he looked about to die. He was too thin, too pale, too old.  
“Oh, I remember when he used to be my mate as well…”  
Zayn left him there and went to sleep. 

What was waiting for Harry at home was way different. Harry didn’t live at the same neighbourhood as Zayn, though his family was too poor to buy a house in the city or send him to a nice school, but at least he didn’t live next to the drug dealers and he had a proper family with a mom, a dad and a little sister. Harry hated both of his parents, but loved the girl. She was thirteen and went to the same class as Tony. Her name was Bree. Brianne, actually, but she liked to be called Bree.  
“Hey, what have you done to your eyes?” He asked when he entered the house and saw his little sister wearing make-up. “You are only ten.”  
“I am turning fourteen in two months, you idiot!” She replied, trying to look angry. “You are only three years older than me.”  
“Four until 20th March.”  
Bree stuck her tongue out and Harry messed up her hair.  
“And what have you done to your knuckles, Harry?”  
That was his father, standing in the doorframe next to his mother. He hid his hurt knuckles on the pocket of his jeans and a flashback of the last night came to his mind: him stealing the stick of a policeman, him hitting the policeman with it until he was on the floor, him punching the policeman on the face with his right fist as Zayn stared at them, paralyzed and bleeding from the cut that the cop just made him with a knife, now on the floor painted in red.  
“I did no wrong, I was just saving my best friend.” He wanted to say. But instead of that, he kept silent.  
“Where have you been all night? And today? We were worried. You didn’t answer any of our phone calls, Harry.”  
“I was with Zayn and Tony.” He lied.  
“You were with Tony?” Bree asked, excited. She was really close to the kid. “I haven’t seen him in the whole weekend!”  
“Where you at Zayn’s house?” His dad asked, ignoring the girl.  
“No, Dad, I was at Tony’s with his sisters and his mom. They need help and company, so Niall and I went there.”  
“You sure got that wounds from helping Tony and his sisters to wash the dishes.” His mom chuckled. “You know that Zayn’s father is a drug dealer, right, Harry?”  
“Yes, I do know he is, but it isn’t Zayn’s fault and it doesn’t mean he is as well, yeah? And he is my best friend, so you won’t make me stop seeing him. You can’t do that.”  
Harry held the sight to his parents for a long time until he left the room, going upstairs to his bedroom.  
Minutes later someone knocked at his door.  
“Go away!”  
“It’s me, Harry.” A tiny voice said. “It’s Bree.”  
The door got open and his sister sat on the edge of Harry’s bed.  
“I think Zayn is awesome, Harry.” She said after a while. Harry smiled.  
“Thanks, Bree, you are the best.”  
“Mom and Dad are scared of him, but I don’t think there is anything scary about Zayn. He is very funny, though he looks quite sad and mysterious sometimes… But he is sweet and interesting, and has beautiful eyes.”  
“Hey, hey, wait a second. Do you fancy him?”  
“What? No! I just think he’s cute… well, he’s good looking, isn’t he?”  
“Yeah, he’s very good looking.” Harry laughed. “But I didn’t know you even thought about boys.”  
“Well, I do, I’m a woman now.” She said proudly.  
“Just because you got your period two weeks ago it doesn’t make you are a woman. It only makes you whinier.”  
“Well, it biologically makes me a woman, so shut the fuck up.”  
He let out a loud laughter.  
“Fair enough, but watch your mouth.” He said, smiling. Then, he looked at her. “Do you want to sleep with me today? Come here.”  
They covered themselves with quilts and huddled together, it was January and their heater was cheap. He remembered how he wasn’t cold at all the night before even though he was only wearing a shirt and a jacket. The blood was rushing through his entire body, moved by the anger that formed inside him when he saw that policeman trying to stab Zayn. However, Zayn was shivering when they fell asleep at the backyard, his dark skin looked really pale, and he was holding his stomach while sleeping. He woke him up and saw the open wound. He had to tear his own jacket apart to stop the bleeding, and then he held his friend to his chest to stop him from shivering.  
Going to the riot was a bad idea.  
As if his sister was reading his mind, she spoke:  
“You went to that riot last night, right?”  
“Sleep, Bree…”  
“You shouldn’t go. I understand people are mad here and need to show it so anybody notices us, but please don’t go there… I watch the news, I watch people die in those things, and I don’t want you to get hurt.”  
“I won’t get hurt, Bree. I can take care of myself.”  
“Maybe you can take care of yourself, but not of Zayn. Not both.”  
“Bree…”  
“Cops kill people there, and they don’t mind if you’re underage because they know nobody will do anything about it.” She kept talking. “I can’t lose my brother, and I know that either you or Zayn get killed there, I will lose you. And I can’t lose you, Harry, I can’t lose my brother, I need you too much…”  
She was crying then. Harry turned around to face her and cupped her face in his hands, drying her tears with his thumbs and kissing her forehead.  
“I need you too, Bree, and I love you so, so much.” He whispered, caressing her head. “I won’t go ever again, baby, I promise. I’m staying here with you.”  
She nodded repeatedly and gradually stopped crying until she almost fell asleep.  
“You are right, I’m whinier now…”  
“I like you whiny. I like having you this close. You used to hate me.”  
She let out a giggle before finally falling asleep and leaving his brother awake in the dark, thinking about Zayn having nothing to hug but a very ugly wound on one side of his stomach.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2.  
It wasn’t hell, but the street. Not death, but the fruit stand, still closed, next to a very very big building where you could read _Emily Dick High School_. Someone dishonored the American poet’s name with spray, which Zayn thought was deserved because who the hell names a British high school after the name of an American poet?  
Usually, the hours passed by, grey and nonsense for the boy, except when he was with Harry. Zayn was only happy when they were together; he knew life would be impossible without his best friend.  
Actually, Harry was the only thing that made Zayn go to class –he never went too much anyway, but at least twice a week- because he liked to mess around with him though Harry would always tell him to stop. Anyway, there used to be a tiny smirk on Harry’s lips that made him keep joking.  
There, in High School, they didn’t have a bad reputation.  
“Well, you know, teenagers respect you when your dad sells them drugs.” Zayn used to say.  
However, Zayn hated when random people asked him for drugs at the corridors. He used to get violent; he even punched a boy once and, if it weren’t for Harry, he would have sent him to hospital. Zayn was thin and could look like an angel with sparkly eyes, but he had an actual demon inside. Harry, on the contrary, looked like he could kill you any moment, but he had a calm temperament.  
It was like they were the exact thing the other one needed.  
That Monday morning, when Zayn entered the Emily Dick High School, a woman approached to him.  
“Zayn Malik, right? Come with me.”  
He was wondering who that woman was when he suddenly saw himself inside of the Headmistress room. He had never seen the Headmistress before, he didn’t even know there was one.  
“Sit down.”  
It was even funny how that woman, who looked even respectably, didn’t fit at all in that room. She was wearing a pearls collar, heels and a dress that covered her knees, but everything around her was broken or dirty. The armchair had plenty of cigarette sears, like she couldn’t afford an ashtray, the table had dry circles of coffee and the shelves on the background couldn’t bare the weight of the piled books. A cracked paper bin was overflowing by stained documents, and Zayn wondered if his file could be there.  
“I guess you know why I called you to my office.”  
Niall frowned; that place couldn’t be considered as an office.  
“No, I’m sorry but I don’t, Miss.”  
The Headmistress looked at him for a very long time, like she was pretending to intimidate him, but her sight only made Zayn chuckle. There was no way that the woman in front of him was actually a Headmistress.  
“Last week you didn’t came to class. Not a single day.”  
Zayn shrugged.  
“I was ill.”  
“You have been ill for three years, Zayn.”  
Zayn chuckled again, both because of the thought that he had been there for three years and had never seen the Headmistress and because he just realized that she had a quite big moustache and her dress had a broken sleeve. Suddenly, she fitted there.  
“What does it make it so funny?”  
Zayn’s lips curved into an ample smile. If Harry had been there, he would have told his friend to stop before he could even start. Harry knew what that smile meant.  
“Well, actually it’s not funny at all. You, Miss, are the one who laughed. At me.” Zayn made a dramatic pause. The woman frowned. “I have a chronic disease.”  
“Oh, really? And what is it?”  
“It has a very weird name because it’s a rare disease, but I think you might know it… It makes women grow a moustache.”  
The Headmistress threw one hand up to her mouth immediately, and all the hair in her body –even the moustache hair- bristled.  
“You are a tiny bastard.” She said, furious. “I will expel you out of my school for a week for that comment. I want you to leave the building immediately.”  
“What? Why? You have no right!”  
“Oh, I do have right. And I would like to talk to your mother.”  
Zayn sat straight on his chair when he heard those words. Nobody asked for his mother in two years.  
“My mother doesn’t live with us anymore. She moved and has another family now.” That was the lie he told everyone.  
“Well, then I’ll call your father.”  
“No. My dad is ill. He’s actually ill.” This time she believed the serious look in his eyes. “You can call my brother’s number.”  
He left the room and waited for the bell to ring, then tried to find Harry along the crowded corridor.  
“Let’s get outta here.”  
Harry followed him to the backyard.  
“What is wrong? I have class now.”  
“I got expelled, I told the Headmistress she’s got a moustache.”  
Harry let out a loud laughter and clapped his hands together.  
“You did what?” He shook his head. “And do we even have a Headmistress?”  
“Actually, yes. And thanks to her I don’t have to come here for a week. Come on, we jump this fence and go somewhere to smoke the pot I took from my dad.”  
Harry considered the options, rubbing his lips together and frowning his dark eyebrows, and then jumped the fence without saying a word. Zayn smiled and went after his friend, looking at each of his sides first.  
They walked to some old and abandoned offices near the school and sat against a demolished wall, smoking. The place was lonely and sad, but it looked like it was even loner and sadder before, all those people with no face entering and exiting the white building day after day, with no hopes or plans for the future.  
Neither Harry or Zayn said anything about that thought, but it made them shudder. They secretly promised to themselves they would not ever end like that.  
“What happens to you, buddy?” Harry asked. “Are you mad because I didn’t let you sleep at mine last night? Or does your wound still hurt?”  
Zayn shook his head.  
“Then what?”  
“The Headmistress asked about my mom.”  
“Oh, man.”  
Harry threw his head back and rested it against the wall. He was the only person Zayn ever told the full truth, although there were lots of rumours about the story going around there.  
“What did you tell her?”  
“She has another family now. She’s happy with her new husband and offspring.”  
That was what Bree was talking about the night before, Harry thought. Those moments when Zayn looks so sad, lost and disillusioned it almost hurts. He closes his eyes and lets his neck let go the weight of his head, like it actually weights so much it is impossible to bare.  
“Come on, Zayn, get up, let’s go somewhere else.” He said energetically, smiling way too big. “We have no classes, and we have this pot, so…”  
“So that is actually pot.”  
Harry turned around immediately at the sound of the deep voice and saw a policeman standing right behind him. He heard Zayn gulp and getting up.  
“Crap.”  
“Come with me.”  
The two boys did. They followed the policeman to his car as they felt cold sweat run down their spine. Zayn, next to his friend, could hear his heartbeat. It was fast and hard, and his hands were shaking. Zayn didn’t mind so much, his father and him had been caught before having drugs and his brother always paid the fine, but Harry… He looked at him and saw his green eyes moving quickly as the policeman was checking some papers. His parents wouldn’t let him go outside in a very long time, and they definitely wouldn’t let him see Zayn anymore, and if that happened…  
The policeman was around forty and had a quite big belly. The car was off and closed and the keys were on his belt, where there was no gun. It probably was inside the car; such a bad idea for a neighbourhood like that, Zayn thought.  
The terms were perfect and he was starting to feel excited.  
“Are you ready?” Zayn murmured.  
“What?” Harry panicked. He knew what that meant. “Zayn, no.”  
Zayn smiled nervously and his eyes shown with an insane and excited light.  
“Don’t be a fag.”  
The bigger boy glanced at the policeman to check if he still was looking at the papers, then his eyes turned to his friend’s feet, which were jumping lightly, ready to run.  
Both of them looked at each other by the corner of their eyes and shared a smile. Harry could see Zayn’s lips move: one, two, three… run.  
As Zayn calculated, the policeman was too old and too big to act fast and they left him behind quickly, plus he went running after them instead of taking the car. He was also too dumb.  
“I don’t know how I always end up running away from someone when I’m with you.” Harry said breathless when they finally thought they were safe.  
“Because you met me running away from someone.”  
Harry remembered that one night he met the boy two years before. Actually, he was going on a date with a very pretty girl, she was little and jittery –just like Niall- and her name was Lydia, and he had to explain a lot of things to her later. 

_Harry just put a foot outside his house when this brunette boy, sweating and panting, pushed him inside his house and locked the door._  
 _“What the…?”_  
 _“You saved my life, oh Lord, you are a goddamn angel.” Zayn kissed his cheeks and forehead repeatedly, and Harry pushed him away violently. “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m too forward sometimes. Let me introduce myself. I’m Zayn Malik.”_  
“I know you.”  
 _“That’s flattering.”_  
 _He took a magazine from the little table at the hall and sat on a sofa in the living room. The house was so little that the hall was only two steps away from the living room, but still it was nicer than Zayn’s. It had warm furniture and warm air, and the night outside was gelid._  
 _“You are the drug dealer.” Harry said, and Zayn’s glance made him take a step back. “I’m sorry, everybody at school knows you for that.”_  
Zayn’s rough face slowly turned warm again.  
 _“What is your name? I think I’ve seen you at school before.”_  
 _“I’m Harry Styles.”_  
 _“Harry Styles, you saved my foocking life.”_  
 _Zayn got up and hugged him, and Harry let him do because of that warm and bluffing feeling you get when a stranger is hugging you, but also because he liked the way Zayn said ‘foocking’, like that, with two o’s._  
 _“I’m glad I did, but I don’t even know what I saved you from.”_  
 _“Those niggas of the streets, they can’t get a joke.”_  
 _Harry laughed and offered him a glass of water to refresh his dry throat._

 

They recovered the air that was missing in their lungs just in time to see Michelle. It looked like she was an extension of the ground, like her long legs were the brunches of a spectacular tree and the ground she touched was succulent grass. She had the power to do that, her light brown skin could make all the gray around her look bright coloured.  
She had round and black eyes, her long hair looked like mahogany, and her smile was feline. But people talks, and they said that, once Michelle had a prey, she would never let it escape until it was in her jaws. Her prey then was the green-eyed boy, Harry Styles, but as herself said, “I am always up for a threesome.”  
“Hey, boys.”  
“Hi, Michelle.” Harry replied immediately, showing his cheekiest smile. Zayn, however, didn’t trust her. “Do you want to join us?”  
“Well, I wouldn’t want to interrupt you two.”  
“Then leave.”  
That was Zayn, who sat on the ground, his back against a concrete column. Harry’s eyes turned to his friend and a threat of death was printed on them. However, Michelle simply smiled and shrugged.  
“Alright.” She kept walking, but suddenly stopped and turned around. “I hope to see you guys at the party this Friday. Specially you, Harry.”  
Then, she walked away.  
“Specially you, Harry.” Zayn mimicked her.  
“What the fuck is wrong with you, mate?” Harry gave Zayn a campion. “She wants to fuck me. And maybe you too, if you weren’t so rude.”  
“I don’t want to fuck her. She’s annoying, and a slut.”  
“Annoying? Have you heard her voice? It’s the most sexy thing I have ever heard.”  
“Your voice is sexier than hers.” Zayn said, and Harry turned his head to look at him in amusement. “Don’t think you’re special. Even mine is sexier.”  
“Oh, you have a very sexy accent.” Harry joked, seeing his friend so annoyed. “I would fuck your accent.”  
“Shut up, faggot.”  
Harry chuckled and sat next to his friend.  
“So, are you ready to party on Friday?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What do you think of this chapter?  
> Sorry if it was boring!!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things get interesting!!

Chapter 3.  
Neither Harry nor Zayn were invited to that party. It was at Jolie’s house, a girl that dated Zayn for three months until she got tired that the boy would hang out more with his friend than his girlfriend.   
_“Choose.”_ She said. _“Me or Harry.”_  
That question was so obvious for Zayn he actually questioned if the girl was being serious. She kicked him out from her house when the boy said,  
 _“Harry, of course.”_  
So, when they got to know that the party was at Jolie’s –and it was her birthday party-, they decided that they wouldn’t come in unless they went late at night, when everybody was already drunk and nobody -not even Jolie herself- cared.   
Anyway, they bought a few bottles of beer and started the party at Zayn’s house, where the music was better and the company reduced but perfect.   
Zayn watched Harry as he wandered around the empty living room –nothing else than a white couch with two pillows and a mirror, not even a table-, moving his head lightly to the rhythm of the music. He was all dressed in black: black jersey, black jeans, black shoes and a black coat. However, he had a beige handkerchief around his head, holding the curls that would cover his forehead and eyes if it weren’t there. It gave him a tough look, but Zayn knew the handkerchief was his sister’s.   
He wished he would look like Harry, though; he always looked so good with his rings and wristbands and long necklaces, with his brown curls and his green eyes and pink lips and white smile, with his tattoos and his muscles working in every step he took, looking as beautiful and powerful as a horse running.   
Yes, Harry looked beautiful and powerful, like a horse.   
Zayn thought that was how the heroes in the movies look like, and felt a bit jealous, but then smiled. Heroes always need a best mate to help them that end up saving their lives.   
“What are you looking at?” Harry asked, feeling the glance of Zayn stabbing him.   
“I was wondering.”  
“Wondering what?”  
Harry turned around to face Zayn, who was sitting on the couch with a beer on his hand and his eyes almost closed, drunk already. Both of them were drunk already.   
Zayn shrugged.  
“Nothing. Just wondering.”  
Harry continued his tour around the room and stopped in front of the mirror, looking at himself until he saw the reflection of Zayn on it.  
When you are drunk and you look on a mirror you feel like it’s a parallel universe, like the things you are seeing aren’t real, like the persons there aren’t the same. He saw Zayn tired and sad, and wondered if he could be happy in that other universe at the other side of the mirror.   
He stared at his friend for a long time after staring at himself, and thought about that one thing that he hadn’t told anybody, not even his best friend sitting on the couch, not even Bree. Harry knew that everybody that had seen them together, even Zayn himself, thought that Harry was the strong one, the one that protected both of them, the one that supported both of them, but deep inside him he knew that was just a lie.  
Zayn was the strong one. He had a broken life, he had broken eyes, but he hadn’t given up. Whenever he felt down, he told himself that he had been through rougher times and got over them. Whenever he felt down, he would look at the bright side and find a reason to keep joking and going out with his best mate, Harry. And Harry was so glad he did, because without him, he would still be as lost as he was when the racial boy pushed him inside his house running away from ‘those niggas’.   
And even though Zayn had that tired look in his eyes when he thought he wasn’t being watched, he had light inside him, and you could see it in the sparks of his eyes. Zayn was made of light and hopes, he was made of ‘getting better’, and whenever Harry was with him, it made him want to get better too, become a better person, become into light.   
Because, compared to Zayn’s life, his was an easy path with flowers and butterflies where Zayn had shadows and violence. Those shadows covered him sometimes, but when the light is so big… It always beats the darkness.   
No, Harry wasn’t the hero. It was Zayn.   
“Harry, let’s go to the party. This is getting boring and I can feel my brother coming.”  
The little house had too many people in it, and when they got there it felt like it was going to break down, trembling with the music and the screams of alcohol and sex. They had to jump over a guy who was too drunk to get up and two girls making out on the grey grass to get to the door.   
Jolie and a boy opened the door, and the inside of the house had dense smoke clouds that made electric sensations when they collapsed against the coloured lights of the room. The atmosphere was sick, the house holding in its bowels a generation of lost teenagers.   
“Happy birthday.” Zayn smiled, approaching to kiss her cheek, but she pushed him away.   
“You dare to come to my fucking house in my fucking birthday you fucking asshole.” Jolie was pretty, but never a lady. “Leave, now.”  
The two boys looked at each other.  
“But, Jolie, we only want to have a good time. We won’t do anything, we promise. Right, Harry?”  
Harry nodded his head, convinced.   
“You heard the girl.” Jolie’s friend said, crossing his arms over his chest and looking quite big and scary. “This party isn’t for you.”  
Without saying a word, Zayn slid one hand in his pocket and took two little bags of pills. Jolie and his friend looked at them as if they were gold.  
“I have things that will make you fly.” He said in the girl’s ear, his warm breath making her shiver. “You can get a couple of them for free, baby. You look stunning tonight.”   
Harry smirked at the floor at his friend’s words as the guy kept looking at the pills, licking his lips. The round circles under his eyes and the few needle sticks in his left arm said everything about him.   
“You can come in.” She said, smiling finally. “But be nice. I have a couple of things here than worth more than a pound.”   
“We will be nice, I promise.” Zayn’s fingers caressed the back of her neck as she ate the boy with the eyes. Then, he pecked her lips and walked away. “Thanks!”  
“Man, she was purring.” Harry chuckled. “I can feel us both are getting laid tonight, just let me find Michelle.”  
“Nah, I don’t commit the same mistake twice. And she definitely was a mistake.”   
Zayn considered that girl was a mistake _only_ because she tried to tear him apart from Harry. In fact, he quite liked her: her slim waist and little hands, her laughter and her hair tickling his arms and hands when they kissed.   
She was nice and beautiful, but Harry meant much more to him. More than either of them would ever know, actually.   
“Look, there she is.”  
Michelle was dancing alone, hips slowly moving, arms up and head back. Her long hair touched the end of her back, and her dark skin looked warm and inviting. She looked like a magic demon and she seemed to be having a very good time.  
Harry looked at her and even though she had her eyes closed she opened them. Her eyes, along with her smile, were feline.   
“Hi, boys.” She kissed both of their cheeks. “I thought you weren’t coming.”

As the night went on it started to get more and more crazy.  
Zayn ran out of pills a few hours later, but it seemed like he could swallow all the alcohol in the house. All around him was yellow, like he was breathing in a banana shake. The figures were blurry and moving slowly, the faces confused him, and all his senses were too awake yet too asleep. He had never been that high in his life.   
Jolie’s kisses felt unreal for him, like in a dream where you know it is you who someone is killing, but you can’t feel anything. He felt agony, sweet and relieving agony as Jolie kissed him and he saw blood on her lips, like she was the one murdering him, sucking all the sweet blood from his viens.   
He knew it was a hallucination, but for a moment he desired it was real. He wished to be empty inside, dry, nothing else than a cold skin.   
“Zayn, Zayn, I still love you.” The girl kept saying. “You hear me? I love you.”   
“You don’t, Jolie, you don’t even know me…”  
But they kept kissing. She kept sucking his warm blood and killing him slowly, and he let her because he knew she was doing him a favour.   
“I want to go back with you, Zayn. I don’t mind about Harry. It was stupid. I was jealous.”  
Harry.   
Where was he?  
Suddenly, Zayn felt like the girl over his lap weighed too much. She had to get off him. He didn’t want her there; she barely seemed real.   
He needed to talk to Harry.  
 _“Where the fuck is he?”_  
Zayn tried to take the girl in his arms and put her away from him, but he could barely move.  
“What did you say, Zayn?” Jolie asked, a shaky smile in her lips. “What is wrong, baby? You don’t look nice. What did you take, Zayn?”  
“I… I don’t know. Ecstasy, maybe. LSD. I drank too much…”  
Jolie sat next to him on the couch and took his hand, trying to find Zayn’s eyes, but they were lost somewhere else.   
“I will come back. Just wait a minute.”  
He got up.  
“Where are you going?” Jolie looked quite desperate.  
“Just wait a minute.” Zayn whispered.   
He stumbled around the house looking for Harry, or for what he thought Harry would look like. Something like a big monster in his high mind, something like a black dragon with wet and rough skin.   
And he found the dragon, but he didn’t have the thick skin Zayn thought he would. He looked just like Harry, but he was eating the princess in a bed. He was hovering her body, kissing her neck and trying desperately to open her blouse. His hands wandered all over her body as she panted hard.   
Zayn felt the urge to run away from there, but something made him stay and watch, and when Michelle’s eyes accidentally crushed on his, his heart stopped and he felt like a child that has done something terrible.  
However, she didn’t.  
“Zayn.” She smiled. “Come here.”  
Harry moved away from her and looked at Zay, frowning. Their eyes met and the blond boy asked for permission to come in, to what Harry nodded.   
Michelle took Zayn by his t-shirt and pulled him close until their lips touched. Michelle’s lips tasted different from Jolie’s. It wasn’t sweet, neither warm. It was bitter and harsh, and for a moment Zayn thought that, maybe, she was the monster. A dragon made of mud.   
“This is not what I came here for.” Zayn spoke against her lips.  
“And what did you come here for, then?”  
Zayn didn’t answer because he didn’t know. So he let her kiss him again as his best friend watched, and the three of them looked at each other after they pulled away.   
Zayn took a pill out of his pocket and put it on his tongue.  
“I want one.” Harry said, and his voice sounded darker than ever before. “Give me one.”  
“That… that was my last one. I sold them all tonight. I made a lot of money tonight…”  
“Give that one to Harry, Zayn.” Michelle said. “Have you swallowed it?” Zayn shook his head slowly. “Give it to Harry.”  
And the two friends looked at each other because they knew what Michelle meant. She didn’t want Zayn to give it to Harry on his hand. She wanted them to kiss.   
Again, Zayn asked for permission, and again, Harry’s head nodded silently, almost imperceptibly. He sat with his knees on the floor so he could be in the same height as them, and placed one hand in the back of Harry’s head, making their foreheads press against each other. They looked into their eyes and felt Michelle watching them, hearing the sound of their heartbeats increasing.  
“Come on.” Harry’s mouth formed the words, but no sound got out from his throat.   
Zayn put the pill on the tip of his tongue and closed his eyes. Then, he pressed his lips against Harry’s, his hand never leaving the boy’s neck, and felt Harry’s mouth opening, his tongue wetting Zayn’s lips, begging them to open.  
And that’s what he did; Zayn opened his mouth and let Harry’s tongue come in, giving him the pill he was keeping inside. And the feeling was weird yet nice, like someone had injected adrenaline right in his heart, like screaming out of his lungs… Like kissing the lips of a sin.   
Zayn felt Harry’s fingers wrap against his arm hard, his nails digging in his skin as they kissed. Both of them forgot about the girl next to them until they couldn’t breathe anymore. Their lips separated and again, their foreheads pressed as they were recovering the air.  
And for a while it felt nice, for a while both Harry and Zayn felt good, but reality hit them quickly.   
“Shit, that was the sexiest thing I have ever seen.”   
And that brought them back and reminded both of them what just happened. It was like a punch in their stomachs, it made them dizzy and terribly confused.   
Zayn got up like he just got an electric shock.   
“That was sick.” He mumbled, looking down at Harry. “That wasn’t what I came here for.”  
The boy sitting on the bed refused to look back at him. He just couldn’t look at him; his heart was still pumping hard and the taste of Zayn’s lips was deep inside him.   
“If this is not what you came for then you should leave.” Harry murmured, looking down to the floor.  
“Are you staying here with her?”  
Harry nodded.  
“I thought you were staying at mine’s tonight.”  
“Well, not anymore. Please, leave.”   
Zayn walked away and slammed the door closed, giving it a kick right after. Harry, inside the room, cringed his face when he heard the harsh noise. Closing his eyes, he let his back fall on the bed and rubbed his hands against his temples.   
Michelle kissed his closed eyes.  
“It was only a kiss, Harry. Everybody kisses.”


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4.  
It was cold. Very, very cold. Zayn’s fingers were numb and his lips were dark purple. His knees were petrified and his arms were rounding his body in a lame attempt to keep his body warm.  
He tried to remember things from last night. Why did he sleep on the street? Why did he have that annoying feeling in his stomach? And why did he have fifty pounds in his pocket?  
Slowly, he started to recover his memories, but wished he didn’t.  
He slept on the street because he kissed Harry and he told him to leave afterwards. He kissed Harry and, let’s face it, he felt something. Something more real than what he felt kissing Jolie, or anybody. But Harry told him to leave, so he left the party and walked on the street until he couldn’t walk anymore, falling asleep over a bench.  
He had taken too many drugs, but he sold many more, so he had fifty pounds in his pocket.  
That was all, and too much.  
He got up and felt dizzy, but walked to the nearest cafeteria and ordered a double coffee without milk and a beer. The waitress doubted about his age; Zayn looked seventeen and was seventeen, but the blue circles below his eyes and the lost look made her doubt, maybe he was seventeen, but he surely felt thirty.  
So she gave him the beer and the double coffee without milk and smiled because he was pretty.  
“The best way to fight a hangover is drinking alcohol, innit?”  
Zayn didn’t find it funny at all, but smiled back and nodded.  
After warming up a bit, he bought a doughnut and left the cafeteria. The waitress looked him walking out with puppy eyes.  
He turned the corner while humming on his doughnut and saw four fifteen years old boys around something. It looked like they were intimidating someone, maybe even hitting them. Zayn frowned and approached a bit to check what they were doing and saw a man on the floor, trying to take something from the ground as the boys laughed. It was lame, the man was even whining and the boys were laughing at him.  
He shook his head but decided it wasn’t his problem, until he recognized the voice of the man.  
“Please, leave me alone.”  
That was his father’s voice.  
Zayn ran towards them and the boys seemed a bit confused.  
“What the fuck do you think you are doing?” He yelled to them. “Is it funny to laugh at weaker people? Oh, let me laugh at you then! Because I’m going to fucking kill you if you don’t run right now.”  
The boys looked at each other with wide scared eyes, but didn’t move a muscle. Zayn took a step forward and the four of them ran away.  
“Thanks, kiddo.” His father said, taking the pills that had fallen on the floor. “They wanted all of them.”  
Zayn couldn’t look at his dad that way, but clenched his jaws and helped him get up from the floor.  
“They came to me and started yelling and pushing me and I fell.” He kept explaining. His hands were shaking, but not for the fear. His hands would shake when he had taken too many drugs. “Now we only have these left.”  
“It is ok, Dad, I went to a party last night. We have enough money.”  
His dad nodded repeatedly and put his hands in his pocket, ashamed of their shaking and the accusing eyes of his son.  
“Let me invite you for a coffee and then we go home.”  
The waitress smiled when she saw Zayn again, but he didn’t even look at her in the eyes when he asked for another coffee.  
No beer this time, he said.  
Feeling better?, she asked.  
Zayn shrugged, and the girl sighed. She watched him from afar and tried to imagine what was on his mind for the fifteen minutes they were there, but she couldn’t guess what got him so worried.  
Zayn left a tiny little tip and walked home with his dad.  
Harry was sitting on the stairs when they arrived.  
“Hey.” He got up very quickly. “I was worried.”  
Zayn’s father looked at both of them and then opened the door.  
“I’ll be inside, sleeping. If you want something…” He shut himself. “Well, if you want something just do it yourselves.”  
He left them two alone and Harry sat down again. Thirty seconds later, Zayn sat next to him. They stayed like that, sitting and without saying a word, for long minutes.  
“Why did you come here if you have nothing to say?”  
“Actually, I do.” Harry was playing with the rings in his fingers. “I want to talk about last night.”  
“What about last night?”  
Zayn looked into his eyes and raised both of his eyebrows. Harry took a long breath and looked away.  
“Nothing.” He whispered. “I only wanted to say that I think Michelle and I are together now.”  
That felt like a kick for him, and the fact that he knew it shouldn’t made him feel worse.  
“Alright. G’luck.”  
Zayn got up and shut the door behind him, leaving Harry there, with his mouth open. He called his name out loud, but the boy never answered.  
“Shit.”  
He got up as well and started to walk to his house, ignoring the gelid wind and the little snowflakes that were started to form, hitting his face like pieces of glass. He shrugged to protect his neck and closed his eyes to stop the feeling of emptiness, but none of those things worked.  
Flashbacks from the last night kept coming to his mind.  
 _”It was only a kiss, Harry. Everybody kisses.”_  
Was it only a kiss, though? When their lips touched Harry felt like all the light that Zayn kept inside him covered his skin, so he kissed him back, and when he kissed him back, the light hit right into his heart, swelling it. He felt like his heart had been always too little and Zayn had brought him to his real size. When the kiss broke, his heart shrunk again and the feeling of emptiness settled there.  
Is it only a kiss when it touches your heart like that?  
But Michelle kept talking.  
 _”Because it was only a kiss, wasn’t it?”_  
 _“Of course it was.” Harry’s reaction was violent, maybe too violent. “Zayn is my best friend. It didn’t mean a thing.”_  
 _Michelle frowned and rubbed Harry’s arm, trying to calm him down. She might be a slut, but she wasn’t stupid. She knew there was something weird in his voice, in the way he spoke and the way he reacted._  
 _“I like women.” He spoke mostly to himself. “I love women.”_  
 _“Do you like me, Harry?” Her voice was soft, even scared._  
 _He looked back at her and frowned._  
 _“Of course I do.”_  
 _She kissed him, and it was a warm sensation, but it didn’t involve him like Zayn did. However, Harry liked her little hands around his waist and needed to see more of her sexy legs, so he closed his eyes and kissed her back._  
 _She let out a low moan._

Zayn grabbed his phone and searched for ‘Twins’ in his contacts list. He sat there, on the floor of his room, with his back against the wall, for a long time. He was looking at the screen but his mind was somewhere else.  
He could feel the anger in his body, he could feel the loneliness in his body, and thought there was only one way out of it. He knew that pot won’t make him feel better, neither alcohol nor talking to anyone.  
He needed to fight, and he needed to fight just then.  
 _“I think Michelle and I are together.”_  
The Twins were the worst kind of person. When you teach a little kid that life is full of monsters and that, if you want to survive, you have to become into one –not any one, but the worst one-, they believe it and turn it into their only reality. And when a kid grows up with that harsh reality in their hearts, it destroys them and creates the monster they desired to be.  
That was what the Twins were, two monsters of the worst kind. They were only eighteen, but there was no hope for them. They had an insane obsession for violence and torturing people. They liked to make the weak ones cry of pain. They liked to watch the weak ones fight against each other.  
That’s why they gathered together with a bunch of lost teenagers to fight until their brains were bleeding and their bodies were too tired to think. It all started four years ago, a year after Niall’s mother death, and he started to go there every week and fight against crazy and depressed boys until he met Harry and he made him stop. Since then, he hadn’t spoke to the Twins.  
It had been two years since he hadn’t heard that voice.  
“Who is this?”  
“Zayn.” He said after two or three seconds. “Zayn Malik.”  
Silence in the other side. Two people speaking.  
“Oi, man, I can’t believe it! Is it actually you? We thought you were dead or _sumfin’_!” The Twin chuckled. “We’ve heard long time ago that you were doing good with your dad, making some money, right? But we haven’t seen you in ages!”  
“Two years, to be precise.” Zayn smiled. “You think we could meet sometime?”  
“Yea, sure. What about tonight? We are going to have some good fights tonight, maybe you’d like to watch them.”  
Zayn thought about what he just said. The Twins didn’t consider him as a weak one anymore, so they thought he would want to go to watch the fights. But the truth’s that Zaynwas about to crumble.  
“No, mate, I’d like to fight tonight.”  
Zayn heard a rough chuckle in the other side.  
“As you wish, my lady.” He said. “See you tonight at the abandoned parking. We’ll be there around 10. Don’t be late if you want to fight against the good ones.”  
Niall hang up the phone and let his head fall back against the wall. He knew that, if he came back, Harry would be really mad. That was, maybe, why he did it. 

_“Why do you go there, Zayn?” Harry asked him while staring at Zayn’s wounded face. He was too young to have such look in his eyes and such scars in his face. “Why do you hurt yourself like that?”_  
 _“It’s the only way out.”_  
 _“The only way out of what, Zayn?”_  
 _“Of my pain.” He said in a whisper. “The physical pain makes me forget about… the other one. And I feel great when I fight. It’s like a shot of adrenaline, you know? And for a moment you feel like flying, like… Like kissing someone. But violently.”_

Zayn fell asleep like that, sitting on the floor with the phone in his hands, until a loud sound woke him up. He had been sleeping for four hours and his neck hurt like hell, but he got up and went to the living room.  
His father was on the floor, trying to cover himself from his brother. He had a bleeding wound on one side of his head and was mumbling nonsense words.  
“There is just one simple thing I ask you for.” His brother was saying in a menacing whisper, squatting in front of his father. “When I come here, I want my dose. I don’t care if a bunch of stupid children attacked you, I want my fucking dose. I deserve it, I pay everything for you two. Is it too hard to understand?”  
What was hard was seeing his father like that, afraid of his own son, who had just hit him in the head because he didn’t have his dose. 

_“What is that other pain you talk about?”  
 _Zayn looked at Harry and smiled in a sad way._  
 _“I saw my mom dying in front of my eyes. Her eyes were back and she had white foam in her mouth. That image repeats in my mind every night, and there is only one way I can black it out.”_  
 _“And it’s by letting someone hit you until you blackout.”__

Zayn closed his eyes hard and took a deep breath.  
“Brad, I have your dose.”  
Brad turned around and saw his brother standing in the doorframe. They stared at each other for a while until Brad got up and approached him.  
“You shouldn’t be the one carrying cocaine around there.” He said. “You are underage and under my custody.”  
“I got some from him for the party last night, but I couldn’t sell it.”  
Actually, it was for himself and Harry.  
“Ok. Give it to me.”  
Zayn nodded and went to his bedroom for the cocaine. When he came back his dad was still on the floor, his brother hadn’t moved a muscle and the man he came with had a nasty smile on his lips.  
He gave him a little white bag and went to help his dad get up. His brother and the other man left without saying a word. 

___“I don’t want you to go to that place anymore.”_  
 _“Why not?”_  
 _“Because I don’t want to wake up one morning and find that my best friend is dead because some mental asshole kicked his head. I will help you to make that image disappear from your memory, I promise. Just don’t go there anymore.”_

Harry did make that image disappear, but Zayn was afraid it would come back. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for this short and lame chapter, but I will post a juicy one very, very soon.  
> I PROMISE YOU WILL LOVE THE NEXT ONE.  
> Please like or comment!!  
> PS; I hadn't have time to reread this one and correct the mistakes, so sorry if you notice some.

Chapter 5.  
It had been a week since that talk between Harry and Zayn, and, since then, they hadn’t spoken anymore. Zayn refused to look at him while they were in class, and they never met in the evening.  
Now Harry had Michelle; they were always seen in the corridors holding hands or kissing, and that made up every kind of rumours.  
The most known was that Zayn was secretly in love with Michelle and Harry had taken her away from him, but they also said that Zayn was in love with Harry and Michelle was between them. The last one kept the two boys awake at night.  
There were also rumours about how did Zayn get those bruises and scars from, and everybody guessed he was meeting the Twins again. Harry heard about those rumours and bumped onto Zayn at the corridor.  
“Man, I need to talk to you.”  
Zayn dodged him and kept walking. “I don’t have anything to say to you.”  
“Well, that’s nice, mate, but I _do_ have things to say to you, alright?” Harry sounded really mad, but Zayn kept walking. “If you don’t come to my house today at five I will go to The Parking.”  
Zayn stopped walking sharply.  
The Parking was the place where the ‘reunions’ where made. It was an abandoned parking at the outsides of the town -in the darkest place of the concrete jungle-, but only a bunch of people knew the exact place. There were lots of rumours about its location, but if you knew the real location and told someone without the Twins’ approval, they would go for you. It was very important not to tell anybody because the police was in constant search for them –they had to change the place of the meetings once.  
Zayn didn’t turn around. “You don’t know where The Parking is.”  
Harry didn’t say anything, because Zayn was right. Anyway, he was scared Harry actually knew and appeared there. The Twins would either make him fight or kill them both.  
“Don’t you?”  
“Zayn… please.”  
He just shook his head and kept walking. 

Harry went to Zayn’s house at 5:30PM, but his father said he already left with two guys that looked exactly like each other. Harry cursed and sat in a bench in front of Zayn’s house, burying his face inside his palms. If Zayn got hurt, if something happened to him and he couldn’t do anything…  
He got up all of a sudden and hit the bench, letting out a gran of pain afterwards and shaking his hand. It was my fault, he thought. I shouldn’t have kissed him, I should have tried harder to speak to him, he thought.  
He took his mobile phone out of his pocket and called Zayn.  
“Come on, Zayn, come on… Answer…”  
Zayn, already at The Parking, felt his phone buzz in his back pocket. He saw it was Harry calling and turned the phone off. There was no time to answer.  
He looked around himself and saw around ten or twelve boys; some were strong and muscular like Harry, but some others were thin, like him. The truth is, when it comes about fighting, it is even better to be thin and agile than strong and uncoordinated. Zayn had a lot of technique fighting and, even though he was really thin -specially those days-, only a few could beat him. Other thing that’s quite important when it comes about fighting is anger. All those kids had been raised in anger; their eyes were red and their breathings hard when they fought, their muscles always in tension. They were scary, one of those kids you change sidewalks when you see them.  
Zayn, however, was different. You will never see him panting or leaning forward with his feet ready to jump on you; he was always calm, so calm it was even scarier than the biggest monster there. You could know he was ready when he squinted and a tiny little spark crossed his eyes. Not the normal sparks, the ones he always has, but a different one. Cold as ice, so cold it sticks to your skin and burns it out.  
Now he was in front of one of those monsters, a 19 years old black boy with yellow eyes. His name was Adrien. His father was in jail for killing two cops, and his mother left them alone when she had enough of her husband getting too drunk and beating her. That happened five years before, and Adrien hadn’t gotten over the fact that his mother abandoned him with the scary creature that his father was. He had been by himself for three years, and during those years his anger just grew.  
That was it: the anger filling Adrien’s body was extremely high, so high he wouldn’t care if he killed you. However, his movements weren’t loose and his senses were slow, so Zayn thought he could beat him.  
“Are you sure you want to fight against Adrien?” A Twin asked into his ear. “He’s a bear. He could kill you with just one finger.”  
For any response, Zayn made short jumps to loose his muscles and stretched his arms and neck.  
He hissed. “Let him kill me, then.”  
The Twin shook his head and smiled, throwing a hand up to the air like it was a gun and firing it.  
“Let the fight begin!”  
Zayn placed his fists in front of his mouth as Adrien did the same and they measured each other. He noticed Adrien had lameness in his right leg and considered attacking by that way first, but as he thought about it Adrien had already hit him and made him fall to the floor. Everything around Zayn became blurry, and the noise of the guys screaming buzzed in his ears for a while. Zayn hadn’t seen that coming; he was faster than he thought.  
Adrien was smiling like an animal as Zayn got up and before he could throw off, he closed his fist and hit him right onto his lip as hard as he could. He felt his hand tingling and adrenaline rushed his body, making him feel stronger and filling him of courage.  
Adrien spitted blood and cleaned his mouth with one hand, frowning. He walked towards Zayn and he got ready, waiting for another punch or maybe a kick. Instead of that he grabbed his neck hard and slammed him against a wall, lifting him from the ground.

“Don’t play with me, Zayn.” He whispered against Zayn’s neck. “You can’t win.”  
He barely had air in his lungs when he lifted a leg and kicked Adrien’s stomach, making him sink and remove his hand. Zayn went towards him again blessing the air, but he didn’t have time to even touch him when he hit him again, punching him on my stomach. He took advantage of Zayn’s confusion to stand up and push him again against the wall, giving him another punch under his chin, which made his head throw back and crash against the concrete with force. Zayn fell on the floor and saw the blurry figure of Adrien coming closer to him to kill him off, but a hand grabbed him and spoke with one of The Twins’ voice.  
“It’s enough, Adrien.” He said. “You don’t want to kill him.”  
He wouldn’t have cared, anyway.  
Two boys helped him to get up, but when he put his feet on the ground his knees got weak and he fell on the floor again. Then, everything else was black.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zayn comes back from the fight and Harry heals him at his bedroom... what do you think that will happen? Will they be friends again? Or something more?  
> Read!!

Chapter 6.   
Harry was going back home from a late night walk -he used to do that when he had too much going on in his mind- when he saw him, sitting against the wall of Harry’s house, barely a figure definite. Harry frowned; it was past midnight and it was raining quite hard. He covered himself with his coat and walked faster.  
“What are you doing here?” He asked Zayn. “Why aren’t you at home? Haven’t you noticed that it’s raining a lot?”  
Zayn’s eyes looked up at Harry and his bowels twitched. He needed just one look to know that something was wrong. He sat on his knees in front of him and made him remove his hands from his stomach to check the wound he got on the riot. It wasn’t bleeding, but his cheeks and lips were wounded. His white t-shirt had red dots that fell from the back of his head as well.   
Harry looked at Zayn with massive eyes and his mouth opened to say something, but no sound came out of him. He felt the word spin around a bit, but then noticed Zayn’s pale face and considered that he felt much more dizzy.  
“Who did it to you? Was it at The Park?”  
Zayn nodded his head. “You have no idea how the other one ended up.”  
Harry knew Zayn was lying, and he also knew it hurt him to simply talk so he helped him to get up and carried him to the front door, looking for the key in his pocket.   
The night was really cold and they were soaking and shivering.   
“How didn’t you come in? Did you knock?”  
“I did.” Zayn’s voice was a dark whisper. “But your father didn’t let me in. He told me to go home.”   
Harry looked at him and frowned as he found the keys and opened the door.   
“Come on, let’s go to my bedroom.”   
The two boys went upstairs and Harry closed the door of his bedroom with a latch. It always fray Zayn that Harry had a latch in his room -not even him had one, though he didn’t had a door.  
Harry gave him a bag of ices that he took from the kitchen and Zayn put it over the wound on his head. Quickly, Harry opened the door to his own little toilet and looked for something to heal his wounds.   
“Change clothes.” He said. “Take some of mine.”   
He heard the sound of the closet and the clothes grazing against each other and looked at the reflection of Zayn in the mirror. He was taking his t-shirt off slowly, like it hurt him, and Harry saw other scars on his torso -old ones- that made him cringe. He watched him putting his old black jersey on and smiled because his wet hair was ruffled and some locks fell over his forehead. Then, he sat on the bed and took off his shoes, followed by his boxers.   
All of a sudden, Harry looked away and kept searching for a medicine cabinet into the toilet drawers. When he finally found one he entered his room again and Zayn looked at him, sitting on the bed. Harry’s clothes were too big for him, making him look pretty little.   
“Is the wound on your head still bleeding?”   
“No. I only feel dizzy.”   
Harry sighed. “Okay, here you have… Take…”   
He felt awkward; he wasn’t sure if Zayn wanted him to help him or if he wanted to do it himself, but seeing that Zayn wouldn’t move, he took a deep breath and sat on his knees in front of him.   
“You should change clothes too.” He whispered before Harry could touch him, and he looked at Zayn asking for silence. “You are soaking.”  
“This might burn you.” He warned. Zayn nodded slightly and Harry rubbed the gauze gently over his cheek. His face cringed in pain, but right after he locked his eyes on Harry, making him so nervous his hands started to shake. “How was it?”  
He was talking about the fight.   
“Crash. Boom. Crack.” Zayn smiled as he acted like he was hitting Harry, playing.   
“I’m being serious, Zayn.” Harry said, though he had a hidden smile on his lips. “I told you not to go. You are stupid.”   
“I’ve done way more stupid things.”   
Harry frowned feeling a blind anger that started in the pit of his stomach and pleaded for getting out, though he didn’t know where it came from. Harry took Zayn’s head in his hands and pulled it even closer, making him look into his eyes. Harry stared at all the wounds and scars that furrowed Zayn’s face, feeling his warm breathing against his nose, and sensed that anger inside him coming up to his throat. He looked at Harry with cautious eyes and tried not to make any grimace of pain as he drew the lines of his wounds with one finger.   
“It’s not so bad.” Zayn whispered under his touch. “It could be worse.”  
Harry got up and looked at the teardrops running down the window. “Yeah, they could have killed you.”   
Zayn got up as well and stepped behind Harry, both of them looking hypnotized through the window. Harry placed a hand on it and felt the small smacks of the rain over the glass, drawing the lines the water did just like he did to Zayn minutes ago. The brown-eyed boy rested his chin on Harry’s shoulder and he felt his warm breathing over his neck, slow and deep.   
“I am fine.” Zayn whispered, causing shivers run down Harry’s spine. His hand played with a wet lock of Harry’s hair. “Thank you. You could have left me there after what I did to you.”  
“Don’t be stupid.” Harry replied immediately, still looking through the window. “I was the one who told you to leave for a girl.”   
“I am guessing we are okay again?”   
Harry raised a hand to take Zayn’s and gave it a little squeeze. “I guess so, yes.”   
Zayn smiled. “I should come back home.”   
“What?” This time Harry turned around to look at him, causing Zayn to remove his chin from Harry’s shoulder, though Harry still felt his breathing on his neck. “You can’t go outside, it’s freezing and raining, and it’s too late… And you just got beaten up. I don’t even know how you made it up here.”   
“But your parents… They don’t want me here.”  
“Who cares about my parents; I’m worried about you.” Harry frowned. “Stay for tonight.”   
“What if they come in?”  
“They won’t.” Harry answered, and Zayn remembered the metallic sound of the latch. “Stay… Stay with me, Zayn. I’ll be nice.”   
Zayn smiled to that nonsense promise and nodded slowly. “But you’ll have to change those wet clothes.”   
Zayn lay on Harry’s bed as he looked for some warm and dry clothes. He found a baggy black sweatshirt and a pair of grey sweatpants and placed them gently over the bed. Zayn watched him do all of this in silence.   
Harry started to take off his wet clothes and, even though it wasn’t the first time he was naked in front of Zayn, he felt uncomfortable. He even looked back to check if Zayn was staring at him, and found the boy’s eyes piercing his back with his jaws clenched. Their eyes met for a second and they looked away immediately.   
Zayn watched the way his muscles worked as he put the sweatshirt on, and traced the line of his boxers with the eyes. He had seen Harry changing clothes many times before, but he had never noticed the way his muscles moved, or the soft look his skin had, how much he wanted to touch it. Zayn shook his head to push those thoughts away and Harry thanked God that his boxers were dry and he didn’t have to change them as well.   
Harry lay next to Zayn in his bed. It was big enough for two people to lay comfortable, but a little bit squished together.   
“Why didn’t you go home?”  
Zayn chuckled in a devastating way and took his time to answer.   
“I don’t really have a home, you know? I thought coming to you would be the best thing I could do…”  
“Why?”  
Zayn looked at Harry and smiled. “Because you always know what to do.”  
“When I saw you bleeding and trembling in my yard I promise I had no idea what to do.”   
“But you are always so calm down…”  
Harry nodded. “You made a good choice. I am very glad you came to me, Zayn. I have missed you.”   
Both of them looked at each other, green and brown mixed together, and locked their eyes for a while until Harry suddenly slapped Zayn’s cheek, letting out a loud laugh and throwing his hands to his mouth as the other boy gasped.  
“What the hell was that!” He laughed, pushing his friend out of the bed until he almost fell. “How can you slap a guy that has just been beaten up! And not any guy, your fucking best mate!”   
Harry was cracking as Zayn pushed him closer and closer to the edge of the bed and he had to grab the quilt so he would not fall off.   
“I’m sorry, okay, I’m sorry. I just felt like slapping you!”  
“Oh, yeah, you did?” Zayn said as he tried to remove Harry’s hands from the quilt. He was almost on the floor already, only half of his torso and a leg over the bed. “What if I feel like…”  
But he stopped there.  
“Like what?”   
Harry smiled and looked up to his friend, whose head was so close they could feel the heat of each other’s skin warming theirs up. Harry’s smile disappeared and he frowned, his eyes locked to Zayn’s again. But there was no slap this time.  
“What if you feel like what, Zayn?” He inquired in a whisper.   
Zayn was about to say something when a harsh smack resonated on the door. Harry got on the bed immediately.   
“Harry, who is in there with you!” Asked his father. “Is it Zayn? I told him to go home!”  
They looked at each other and Harry shook his head slowly.   
“I should…” Zayn whispered.  
“Sh.”   
Harry put his hands over Zayn’s mouth, rounding his shoulders with one arm. Harry’s father kept kicking the door and yelling.   
“Open the bloody door, Harry, I know you are in there!”   
_Goawaygoawaygoaway_ , Harry was mouthing, eyes closed. Zayn removed Harry’s hand from him and held it in his, squeezing it like Harry did before.   
“I will talk to you and your fucking friend tomorrow. You won’t ignore me like this ever again.”   
Then, they heard steps walking away and finally breathed.   
“He’s gone.” Harry said.   
“I’m so sorry.” Zayn replied. “It’s my fault.”  
“It is not your fault if my parents are assholes.”  
“But they might be right… you were a nice boy when I met you, and since then… I mean, it’s normal that they see me as a bad influence. I appeared nearly dead at your door.”   
“Fuck ‘em.” Was everything Harry replied.   
Slowly, they started to feel sleepy and got into the covers, warming up their seized bodies. Outside the rain kept crashing to the floor and window, making them feel safe inside the room. And, suddenly, after too much time, they felt happy. The silence around them, only broken by the rain and their own breathings, was like being five again and not knowing anything about the world, not even knowing that the world _exists_.   
Zayn, overwhelmed by that feeling, turned around and pressed his chest against Harry’s back, carefully, adapting his body to Harry’s. His heart was beating so hard he was scared Harry could feel it in his back, which only made it beat faster. The curly boy, almost asleep, sighed when he felt Zayn’s warm body against his, and smiled with his eyes closed. Zayn rested his head on Harry’s neck, letting his curls tickle him on the nose and took his hand between his fingers, drawing figures over his skin. Harry shivered by the feeling of his breathing and his fingers and moved a bit, making sleepy sounds, and took Zayn’s hand in his, pressing it against his own chest.   
Zayn called him in a whisper. “Harry.”  
“Yes?” Harry’s voice was hoarse, and Zayn noticed that his eyes were closed.   
Zayn took his time to answer.   
“What is this?”  
“What is what?”  
“…This. What we are doing.”  
Harry didn’t answer, but moved heavily under Zayn’s arms. He called him again.  
“Sleep, Zayn.”  
He closed his eyes hard for a moment and nodded, starting to move away to turn around, but Harry held his hand tighter and pulled him even closer.   
“But stay like this. Please.”   
Zayn smiled when he felt Harry’s heart pound harder against his hand as he said those words, and closed his eyes.   
“Good night, Harry.”  
“Good night, Zayn.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please comment or like.   
> Please, please, please!!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has some action too... the boys run away from Harry's house in the morning and end up at Zayn's!   
> Sighhh what will happen?

Chapter 7.  
They woke up before the sun, and get out of Harry’s house through the window so his father couldn’t see them.   
“Where are we going?”  
Harry shrugged. They would just walk; walk as the sun was rising behind the buildings, the streets wet from the water that fell during the night.   
They used to do that always after a night out; two slow gunmen eating the early day, two demons that closed the night before with two shots of fire, scratching the night sky with his screams like thunders.   
And as they walked they saw a black kid and a white guy under the quiet safeness of a parking, a couple of bikes behind them. It was six in the morning and it seemed like they spent the entire night there, like they spent their entire lives watching people walk that street. A few meters further there was a beautiful Latin girl, not much older than 16 years, sitting on a chair at her little, dirty garden. She was taking care of who seemed her brother, but could also be her child. She also watched them walk, hypnotized by the sound of Zayn’s lighter.   
Normally, they would talk about girls, about what they did that night, about drugs and fights, but that day they were dead silent. It wasn’t an awkward silence, though; it was as natural as their breathings, and as they kept breathing, they kept walking, all day, never speaking too much, simply enjoying the company.   
But when the sun came down and it was freezing cold and their legs and feet hurt, they went to Zayn’s house.   
Harry was lying on the couch, his arms flying everywhere and making shadows in the room, while Zayn was sitting on the floor, his head resting on the couch.   
There were bottles of beer all over the place and smoke blurring the air.   
“What the fuck you gave me, Zayn?”  
“I don’t know, I stole it from my dad… Why?”  
“Because I bloody love it.”  
They looked at each other and burst into laughter.   
The music was playing low and the only light they had was a streetlight coming from the window, orange and granulated. It made the room look like an old picture and the boys seemed prettier, happier, like people look in old photos.   
Harry let his body slip down the couch until he was sitting next to Zayn. He was holding the neck of a beer with cold hands and stayed like that for a long time, listening to every sound and silence: the little click that his iPod did changing from one song to another, Zayn’s lips breaking away from the joint and breathing out a grey mass, the comfortable noise that his shoes did when he rubbed them against the carpet, the streetlight outside twinkling, begging not to die… But he also heard Zayn’s deep silence, so deep it was even holy.   
Harry, slowly, looked at him and his eyes wanderer over his face, from his long eyelashes to his thin lips. He saw that light in Zayn’s eyes that made him look so mysterious and considered it was even more hypnotizing than looking at fire.   
He felt Zayn’s chest going up and down as he breathed and thought about the night before, how his breathing over his neck lulled him until he fell asleep, feeling safe. He remembered their bodies pressed together, warming up each other, and thought about the places where his skin was a bit thicker than before, scars like train tracks underneath his shirt.   
“What are you looking at, mate? You are creeping me out.”  
Harry laughed, but didn’t stop looking at him. In fact, he made Zayn face him and gently rested his forehead against his. Zayn closed his eyes, tired, and felt Harry’s hand rest on the back of his neck.   
It was raining outside.   
“You know what.” Harry whispered.   
“What?”  
“I have the weirdest feeling ever.”   
Zayn opened his eyes and Harry saw everything in them.   
“Are you having hallucinations?”  
“Maybe.” Harry shrugged, giggling.   
Zayn moved back to look into his friend’s eyes better.   
“So what do you feel?”  
“I like your lips. I really like them, they are very… elusive. And funny. Are mine funny?”  
Zayn looked at them for a long time and then shook his head. “No, they are beautiful. More than any girl’s lips.”   
“Zayn…”  
“Yes?”  
The dark-haired boy was still looking at Harry’s lips and didn’t realize the look in his eyes, neither how he was tracing the boy’s jawline without touching it, purely afraid.   
“I want to kiss your lips.”  
“Do it.” Zayn replied immediately, whispering.   
“What?”  
“Kiss me.”   
Now Harry looked into his eyes.   
“Are you sure?”  
He nodded.   
All of a sudden, Harry moved his head dangerously close to Zayn’s but stopped just in front of his lips, mouth open, both of them breathing the same air. Their lips were shaking until they connected abruptly, like it was the only way of kissing, but felt so connected it even scared them and made them pull away.   
They spoke in a whisper.  
“Your heart is going crazy, Zayn.”  
“So is yours.”  
Harry put his own hand over his chest and the other one over Zayn’s chest, carefully, feeling both heartbeats at the same time, and then chuckled while shaking his head.   
“No girl ever made me nervous… At least not like this…”   
Zayn smiled wildly and moved one hand quickly to grab the neck of Harry's sweatshirt, pulling him hard against his body and crashing their lips again. They shook from the contact and tasted sugar, they tasted summer in London and everything else seemed stupid; there were no fears, no riots, no poverty, no blood… They took happiness in their hands and gave it a massive bite, letting it gush and stream down their arms.  
They pulled away, panting anxiously, and pressed their foreheads together again until their breathings got normal. Harry’s fingers rubbed gently against Zayn’s jawline, his beard tickling him on the pads. He gave him a few pecks on the lips and crawled up to the couch without saying anything, lying face up.   
Zayn, still sitting on the floor, shut his eyes hard and closed one hand in a fist, hitting on one of his knees in frustration. Zayn knew what that meant; Harry wanted him to go up on the couch with him. He was teasing him, but he wasn’t entering that game, he told himself.   
However, he turned around and sat on his knees next to Harry, resting his chin over one of his forearms. Harry moved his eyes to look down at him and ran a hand through Zayn’s hair, letting it fall down to his chin and pulling him closer by it until their lips were touching and Zayn felt that indescribable feeling intoxicate his veins once again. Maybe Harry was the worst kind of drug… Something like a harsh, crude kind of MDMA.   
“It’s raining”, Zayn whispered, because he just noticed, and in the darkness of the room they stared into each other’s eyes because it was the only thing that could be seen, two pair of shiny eyes in the shadows. “How long has it been raining?”  
Harry didn’t answer, and that was when Zayn saw the green in Harry’s eyes and he suddenly wanted to sleep with him, because you could drown in those eyes, he thought, you could commit suicide for those eyes, for having them looking at you the way Harry was looking at him. And he groaned in silence, in frustration, making Harry smirk -he knew Harry was smirking because he saw the reflection of his white teeth- because he knew what Zayn was thinking, but the only thing Harry did was pushing him away when he tried to crawl over him, and Zayn’s back fell against the carpet with the sound of Harry’s laugh, a childish laugh that made Zayn shiver.   
“You bloody asshole, teasing me, Zayn fucking Malik.”  
Harry laughed again in the same voice, and that was the last thing Zayn heard before falling asleep over the carpet.   
When he woke up the next morning, Harry wasn’t there anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if it was too bad, I try my best...   
> Please, please, please, comment or like!!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry, I wrote this on a hurry and I couldn't reread it so maybe it's not as good, but I hope you like it :)

Chapter 8.  
Zayn wandered around his house nervously, his mind going too fast, making his thoughts confused. He had his hands over his head, running through his own hair, and an image of Harry doing the same to him appeared in his mind like a thunder: short, bright, fulminant. He whined like a puppy dog and let his body fall over the couch.  
Why did he leave so early? Why didn’t he wake him up? Why didn’t he leave a note? Did all of that mean nothing to him?  
Zayn felt his head about to explode and covered it with his hands, making his mind rest for a while. But what he didn’t know is that, if he had woken up ten minutes before, he could have said goodbye to Harry, who shook Zayn a bit to wake him up but felt really sorry for him, so deeply asleep, and didn’t want to bother him anymore.  
So Harry left quietly -something that he could do very well- and now he was walking home, trying to get any thought out of his mind. The water that fell last night was frozen on the floor, making beautiful ice crystals that he would have loved showing to Zayn but he had to go home, and he had left Zayn there, inside the house that wasn’t his home, wearing the old black jersey that Harry wouldn’t wear anymore and that smelled like dust, cheap cologne and Zayn’s warm body.  
The reason that Harry had left so soon was that he got tons of missing calls from his parents during the night, and a message that iced the blood in his veins: _We need to talk. Now._  
So it didn’t surprise him when he entered his house and saw both of his parents sitting on the couch, waiting for him. He didn’t say anything; he just sat in front of them and waited.  
“Where were you last night?”  
“I slept at Zayn’s. That’s all.”  
His parents looked at each other, and his father leaned forward. Harry took a deep breath.  
“We don’t want you to keep seeing that boy.” His father said, slowly. “We know you know that we don’t like him, but we never banned you from seeing him. Now we do. That boy is changing you, Harry.”  
“And what’s the reason.” Harry tried to sound ice cold, but his voice broke at the end of the last word. “What made you change your mind.”  
“He came to our house bleeding, asking for you.”  
“He was only asking for _help_ , and you ignored him. And he’s the ‘bad’ one in here? Please, you are just two fucking hypocrites.”  
“Don’t you dare talking to us like that.”  
“You know what?” Harry got up, frowning. “I don’t care about a-ny-thing you say. Anything. I am going to do whatever I want. You can’t make me stop seeing Zayn. You just can’t. I’d see him in class.”  
The only thought of not seeing Zayn ever again made Harry’s legs weak.  
“We are changing you to another school.”  
“What?”  
He repeated slowly. “We are changing you to another school.”  
“No.” Harry said and looked at his mother -who has always been more comprehensive- and she looked away, feeling guilty. “No, you can’t.”  
“We do, and we will.”  
Harry’s heart started to pound in a faster pace and his eyes got blurry. His parents could make him stay at home all day -they already did a while ago- and if he went to a different school…  
“I hate you.”  
The way he said those words tasted like venom in his mouth. His tongue, poisoned, outlined every word with the worst kind of anger, the kind of anger you get when you feel obliged to do something that you don’t understand, such as stopping seeing someone that causes nothing but happiness to you.  
He went upstairs with all his muscles tensed until he reached his bedroom and closed the door behind him with the latch. Then, he let all that blind anger go and kicked the last drawer of his closet, breaking the wood in little kindling. He punched his own bed repeatedly with force and took the pillow, crashing it against the wall with a muffled sound.  
“FUCK!”  
Harry was panting and bust and let his heavy body fall over the bed, relaxing. That was when his anger dissipated and sadness came, devastating him in the inside. What if it was true, what if he couldn’t see Zayn ever again? However much he tried, he couldn’t stop the tears. His eyes were red and stinging and he scratched them furiously as sloppy sobs came out from his chest, making him feel ridiculous. He didn’t know what those tears meant, he didn’t know if he would have cried in that same way -as a five years old baby- if nothing had happened between Zayn and him, he didn’t know anymore if he could bear a life without the boy with stars in his eyes.  
And, just like that, with wet cheeks, his tired body fell asleep until a voice and some knocks woke him up.  
“Harry, open the door, it’s Bree.”  
Heavily, he woke up and dragged himself to the door, opening it. He looked down at the girl and turned around to lie on the bed again. She frowned and followed her brother, closing the door behind herself.  
“It’s lunch time.” She said in a low voice. “Do you want to go downstairs?”  
Harry shook his head.  
“Mom has been crying all morning.”  
“I don’t fucking care.”  
Bree shut her eyes for a second like it hurt her. “You should care.”  
“She’s as horrible as Dad. She ain’t doing anything about this; she also wants me to change schools. I don’t fucking get it.”  
The girl sat on the end of Harry’s bed and played with his toes, causing him to smile for the first time in the entire day.  
“I understand you, Harry.” She said. “And I want to help you. I can talk to them if you want me to, I can tell them that you haven’t changed… But I am worried as well.”  
“Why?”  
“You put yourself in danger all the time…”  
Harry shook his head and closed his eyes for a while before sitting up in front of his sister.  
“Have you been crying?”  
Harry ignored her question. “Do you know how you can help me?”  
“How?”  
“Tell Mom and Dad that I don’t want to get out of here all day, that I don’t want to see them. I am going out, but only for the day. I will be back for dinner, alright?”  
“How are you getting out?”  
Harry pointed at the window and Bree laughed, shaking his head.  
“Alright. But promise me you will come back for dinner.”  
Harry promised her and kissed her forehead. “I love you, Bree. Thanks a lot.”  
Just before he was about to leave, his sister called him. “What is going between Zayn and you? Something… is different now.”  
He felt a twitch in his stomach and smiled. “What you mean different? It has always been like this.”  
Those words, his answer, wandered in his head as he got out from the window, just like he did with Zayn the day before, and walked to his house.  
Zayn was cooking his own lunch when he heard the bell ring and cursed, thinking it would be his father or Brad, but his heart stopped when he saw a slender figure wearing a long black coat and big black shoes, standing with his back to him. His brown curls seemed to be really cold.  
“Heeey… what are you doing here?”  
Harry turned around and smiled to him, pink lips looking red from the cold.  
“I’m sorry for leaving like that before. Can we go for a walk?”  
“I was making lunch… but sure, I’m not really hungry.”  
Zayn took a coat and closed the door, walking next to Harry. The air was cold and made their faces itch, but it also made them feel alive and excited; the idea of another day together. Their breaths condensed as they touched the air and Zayn joked about how they looked like dragons, blowing smoke through their mouths and noses.  
“I need to say something to you.”  
Zayn looked at Harry immediately and told himself to calm down. Harry didn’t say anything for long minutes, and Zayn didn’t insist; he knew Harry would say it in the right moment. They walked a bit more until they appeared at a park and sat on a bench, next to each other, with their hands in their pockets and their legs moving to keep their bodies warm.  
“I left so early today because I got a lot of missing calls and messages from my parents. I tried to wake you up, but you were deeply asleep and I didn’t want to bother you… You aren’t very nice when someone wakes you up, you know.” Harry said, and Zayn smiled. “When I came home my parents looked very mad and they started to talk shit and… Well, they don’t want me to keep meeting you. They want me to move schools so I can’t even see you at class.”  
Zayn frowned. “What?”  
Harry didn’t say anything else, he just looked down to his shoes and kept chewing on his gum. Then, he spat it out and saw it rolling on the floor until it stopped next to the following bench. He was clenching and loosing his fists inside his pockets, feeling the gaze of Zayn on him.  
Harry had to fight the tears again when he heard Zayn speak. “They can’t do that, they can tear us apart just like that… Do they?”  
He shrugged because he knew they could but didn’t want to make Zayn too upset.  
“Shit. This is all my fault.”  
“Stop saying that, Zayn.”  
“I shouldn’t have come to your house the other night, it was a mistake. I shouldn’t have done so many things… I shouldn’t have made you go to those riots, or skip class almost everyday, or take so many drugs… I even kissed you first.”  
Harry looked at him when he said the last comment. “Shut up. Now.”  
“But it’s true!” Zayn chuckled. “You were a happy guy before you met me. What are you now, huh? I used you to make myself happy and saddened you.”  
Harry took Zayn by the neck of his shirt, pulling him closer and crashing his lips against Zayn’s to stop him from talking. Harry kissed him angrily, biting on his lips and controlling his tongue, mad for all the blames and stupid things he said. Zayn was tense at first, but calmed down slowly and rounded Harry’s neck with both of his arms, groaning when Harry bit on his lips.  
It was the kind of kiss that aches in your heart; the kind of kiss that has such violent feelings you feel like someone is burning your skin. It’s like a storm on a summer day, thunders and opposing winds that fight for dominance.  
When they broke the kiss Harry buried his face in Zayn’s neck, resting his forehead where his neck and shoulder connected. He rounded Zayn’s waist under his coat with both arms and breathed brokenly against his skin.  
“I am happy now.” He breathed. “It’s weird. I thought I used to be happy, but… Now I know I wasn’t. I guess I’m only happy when I’m with you, you know?”  
Zayn shut his eyes hard because he thought those words wouldn’t take effect on him if he closed them, and Zayn didn’t want them to take effect on him because he knew Harry very well, and he knew he would say anything in those moments when he felt too much things at the same time, but would take his words away when he thought about it coldly.  
Anyway, he kissed Harry on the top of his head and rubbed his back to comfort him, whispering nonsense words to his ears such as,  
“Then, you will always be happy, because I won’t ever leave you.”  
And they kissed again and again and murmured sweet and stupid words to each other for the rest of the day, walking around the empty streets, living that day as if it was the only one of their lives, as if tomorrow didn’t matter because they were going to die that night and who cares then, who cares about the promises and confessions and kisses, there was going to be no tomorrow.  
But the night came, and with it, the death threat. Zayn accompanied him as close to his house as Harry let him, and cornered him against a wall before he could leave, both of them feeling protected by the darkness.  
“Sleep at mine tonight, Harry.” He breathed against his neck as he kissed on it repeatedly. “Please.”  
“I can’t. I promised my sister I would be back for dinner. I’m sorry.”  
But Zayn kept sucking on his neck, making Harry let out low moans. Zayn kissed a trail from his neck up to his lips and let the weight of his body fall against him as Harry sneaked his hands inside of Zayn’s back pockets, grinding their hips together.  
They kissed harder as their bodies moved together, hips rolling against each other and constant moans escaping from each other’s mouths until Harry pushed away abruptly, gliding away from Zayn.  
“I’m sorry.” He said, smiling. “I really need to leave now.”  
And he ran towards his house without turning away, leaving Zayn there, standing under a streetlight and looking fixedly to where Harry disappeared.  
Again, he closed his eyes hard and tried to push away everything he felt because he knew that Harry wouldn’t feel the same tomorrow day, but as he walked back home he saw all the places where they kissed on the quiet, scared someone could see them -which only made it more exciting-, and thought it would be very difficult to forget it all so easily.  
Maybe I still have time before this all turns complicated, he told himself, and closed his jacket to keep walking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please, please, please, comment or like!!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm reeeeally sorry for this short and boring chapter, but it was definitely necessary for the plot. The next one will be much more juicy, and quite long -I might divide it in two parts- so just wait for it a bit, it'll be up by Monday, maybe sooner.   
> Anyway, enjoy this chapter!!!

Chapter 9.   
_“No, Zayn, I can’t meet you today. My parents won’t let me go out and Michelle is coming over.”_  
Those words echoed inside Zayn’s mind like a death sentence. Not only the words, but also the way he said it, confirmed what Zayn thought. It was another day, it was _tomorrow_ , and tomorrow had no space to keep two people in the same place.   
_“Okay, mate. See you at class then.”_  
Harry hung up the phone without saying anything else because he knew he wouldn’t see Zayn at class the next day since Zayn _never_ went to class on Mondays. However, he felt guilty because he had lied to him. He could have actually met him -his parents were going to be out all day-, but he really wanted to have sex with Michelle that evening. In his mind it sounded stupid, but to his body it felt necessary. But if he only had knew… If Harry only had knew what was about to happen to Zayn that night and what was it going to cause to both of them, he would have ignored his body needs. He would have called Zayn and fucked him instead.   
But he didn’t know, so he called Michelle and left Zayn at home, his mind torturing him with images of Michelle and Harry together: she was touching his chest, he was taking off her dress, she was sucking his neck, he was whispering his desires, she was rubbing his pants, he was kissing her thighs…   
It was all in his head, but jealousy was driving him crazy. He shut his eyes to keep the image away from him, but it was under his eyelids, deep inside his eyes, seared in his pupils. His stomach felt sick and his fists clenched.   
He wasn’t disposed to stay like that all day, so he decided he would call The Twins and go to The Parking to watch the guys fight -he wouldn’t fight this time- and sell some pills to them; so as the Sun set -that Sunday earlier than usual- Zayn got his coat and walked against the cold wind. And at that same time, at Harry’s house, Michelle was entering his bedroom and sitting on the bed.   
“Are we alone?” She asked.  
“Yes. My parents will be away all day and my sister is at some friend’s house.”  
Michelle smirked and bit her lower lip, looking up to Harry under her long eyelashes, and pulled him closer by taking him from his belt. She made him bend down and they kissed in a heated up way, but Harry noticed that was all. They attracted each other, but that was all. No twitches in his stomach, no shivers running down his spine, no trembling hands… Just a desire of touching her body. He felt confident around her, not even close to what he felt when he was next to Zayn: he felt little, like Zayn was so incredible he couldn’t even look at him in the eyes without getting that sensation that feels like a kick in the balls.   
He shook his head to keep those thoughts away from him and bit down on Michelle’s lips.   
“So I can be loud?”  
He smirked and licked her upper lip, eyes closed. “You can be as loud as you want, baby.” 

Meanwhile, Zayn was reaching The Parking and approaching to The Twins. They looked at him and said hello with a nod. Zayn crawled the short wall next to them and sat there, his legs hanging as he lighted up a cigarette. None said anything for a while and Zayn watched the smoke fly away with the wind. In front of them a bunch of boys were pushing each other and laughing stupidly, getting ready for the ‘battle’ in an hour or two.   
“Don’t you hate them, Zayn?” One of The Twins said. “They’re so stupid. They think that coming here can save their sad lives, they think my brother and I are heroes. They disgust me.”   
The Twin spat on the floor and Zayn took another drag of his cigarette, blowing the smoke out of his mouth very slowly.   
“If you hate them so much, why do you keep doing this?”  
The Twins looked at each other.   
“We get bored if we don’t.”  
Zayn chuckled; they were even sicker than he thought.   
“But we like you, Zayn.” The other Twin spoke. “You are not like those boys. You have something else, you know? We would like having you come around more often. Maybe you could help us with the reunions and stuff… Be like a co-leader.”   
“No, I’m sorry.” Zayn shook his head. “I’m too busy lately.”   
The Twin looked up at him and cocked an eyebrow, a half-smile printed on his lips. Zayn jumped off the wall and stood next to them, looking at them fixedly.   
They had blond hair, almost white, and their faces were so pale you could see the veins on their cheeks, under two purple circles above their eyes –because people said those boys never sleep, they stay up all night on clubs or ‘secret reunions’ (mostly called mafias) with their father- and their teeth were yellow from the abuse of smoking. They were so thin they looked sick, about to die.   
The only beautiful thing about them was the pair of round, blue eyes each of them had. They were dark blue -deep ocean blue- with trims of an intense, bright sky-blue. Their eyes were hypnotizing, and Zayn thought it was the only reason they could have so many girls sleeping with them.   
“I’m going to sell these.” Zayn showed a little bag with some pills. “I think your boys might want to get high before they start hitting each other.”   
And he walked away, looking up to the already dark sky, only two or three white stars shining. He thought about Harry, about what he said to him the night before.   
_“I want to get out this place.” Zayn murmured. “I hate this neighbourhood and everything it means. I hate the people, the school, the streets, this bloody cold… I need to get out of here. You can’t… you can’t even see the stars.”_  
 _“But they are there anyway.”_  
 _“Yeah, but who cares if you can’t see them?”_  
 _Harry frowned. “You can find them somewhere else.”_  
 _Zayn chuckled, shaking his head. “Where?”_  
 _“In someone’s eyes.”_  
 _Their sights met when Harry said that in a shaky whisper, and Zayn could feel his hands shaking and his heart racing._  
 _“Have you found them in someone’s eyes, Harry?”_  
 _Harry looked away and Zayn could see a hidden smile in the corner of his lips. “Yeah.”_  
Zayn thought about the kiss right after, the short pecks sneaking into the long makeout, all the pants and Harry’s hands running through his hair, pushing him closer, closer, closer, as much as he could, because he was finding himself unsatisfied, always wanting more of Zayn.   
But now he only wanted more of Michelle, kissing her lips desperately as the girl rolled her hips, riding him. He was only thinking of pressing her tighter, going deeper inside of her, harder, faster as their mouths kissed abruptly between thrusts and sweat and moans.   
“Shit, Harry, please never stop.”  
She was grabbing the sheets and pulling them as her toes curled and Harry smirked, his hands roaming her entire body to end up on her ass, grabbing it and pushing it closer to him, entering her deeper and making her let out a loud moan.   
“Yeah, babe, let it out.” He breathed to her ear in a dark raspy voice. “Let me know. Tell me, girl.”

Zayn, however, was living something quite different from that. He was standing next to The Twins, watching Adrien beat another guy -though this time it was different since the boy was much bigger and skilled than him- as the rest of them yelled and encouraged them to keep going, making a disgustingly sick scene.   
That was the first time he understood The Twins, and what Harry used to tell him; he wasn’t as helpless as those kids, not even as The Twins, who thought they had that world of violence and drugs in their hands. Suddenly, he felt out of place and was about to leave when the police broke into The Parking.   
If you asked Zayn what he remembers from it he wouldn’t tell you much: everybody running in different directions, the cops hitting the kids with batons -not caring if they were underage or not because the law doesn’t protect the underdogs-, yells, kicks, falls and blue and red lights.   
But he sure remembers something, and it’s The Twins corner him against a wall.  
“We know it was you who told the cops, you little shit. Be careful.”   
Then, one of them gave him a kick on his leg that made him fall to the floor and both of them ran away, leaving him unable to escape from the cops.   
“Hello, kid.”   
Zayn looked up to the person who was talking to him and saw a tall man with a baton in his hand. He was wearing a dark blue uniform with an insignia on his chest and then he felt an intense pain on the back of his head that made him faint.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!!  
> Please, please, please, leave kudos or comment!   
> Thanks. :D


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I believe this chapter is much better than the one before! I think you will like it. :)  
> Sorry if the mature stuff isn't good (oops spoiler) but I'm a bit awkward writing about sex... Sorry!  
> Anyway, hope you like it. :D

Chapter 10.  
Harry was so worried he even whined like a puppy dog by the Friday night. Zayn didn’t go to class on Monday, and that was normal, but he didn’t for the rest of the week either, and wouldn’t answer his phone calls. Harry thought he would be mad because he spent the night with Michelle after all the things that happened between them, but it was too strange. He was dying to go to his house, but his parents banned him from going out during the week, and they always had an eye on him, so there was no way he could get out of his house.  
But it was Friday, so Harry just took a coat and walked to Zayn’s house. The night was dark and gelid, and as he walked he felt the wind taking over him, entering from his open coat and surrounding his chest with a layer of sad cold, which also entered through his nostrils and mouth and reached his heart, that started to beat slower, making him feel the loneliness he had been hiding during the entire week.  
Harry closed his coat and kept walking, thinking that the only thing he wanted was reaching Zayn’s house and take a warm bath or hide under a soft blanket; that would make him feel much better. He also thought about Zayn’s voice against his ear, softer than anything else, and shook his head though he knew it would make him feel better than any bath or blanket. But he had to talk to him first, he told himself, de needed to know what happened.  
He found himself feeling excited when he rang the bell of Zayn’s house, changing the weight of his body from one foot to another.  
When Zayn finally opened the door, his head peeping out from a little aperture, Harry saw that something had changed on him. Maybe, he had let his beard grow for the entire week, or he hadn’t washed up his face that morning, but Harry thought it was something deeper than that.  
“Harry… it’s just you.”  
Harry frowned when he said ‘just’, like he was expecting someone else, and noticed what it all was about when their eyes met. It was the lights on his eyes; they weren’t there anymore. Now he had an opaque reflection that made him look like a scared animal.  
It also made Harry scared.  
“May I come in?”  
“Yeah, sure.”  
Zayn opened the door to let him in, but closed it in the very next second Harry came in. Both of them walked to the kitchen.  
“Have you had dinner? Do you want something to drink? I can make anything…”  
“I’d love a hot chocolate, it’s freezing outside.”  
Zayn smiled for the first time and Harry felt relief. “Alright.”  
“Thank you.”  
Harry sat on a stool and they stayed in silence for a couple of minutes as Zayn prepared the hot chocolate. Harry watched him doing it, and he would have loved it -he enjoyed watching people do the most common things, he thought it was the best way to know someone- if it wasn’t because he was too worried.  
He couldn’t tell exactly what, but there were things that had changed in Zayn, and in just one week. The way he moved, the way he spoke or looked at him, even the clothes he wore… Harry needed to know.  
“Zayn, why didn’t you come to class this week?”  
“I didn’t feel like.”  
“And why didn’t you answer any of my calls?”  
Zayn turned around and gave him the hot chocolate. “Careful, it’s steaming.”  
Harry nodded a couple of times and gave it a little sip before placing it over the table. Then, he looked at Zayn in the eyes, who looked away.  
“Are you going to answer?”  
“I don’t want to embitter you that hot chocolate. We’ll talk about this week when you finish it.”  
Minutes later they were sitting on the couch, next to each other, sharing a cigarette and looking through the window. The night was still looking harsh, but at least they were protected in the inside.  
“Where is your dad?”  
Zayn shrugged. “I don’t know. Somewhere, dying of cold.”  
“Are we going to talk now?”  
Zayn looked away from the window and fixed his eyes to Harry’s. They were still as green as they were that night, even more, and he suddenly got that feeling again. He wanted to kiss him and sleep with him; make love to him. But it wasn’t the right moment to kiss anybody, he thought. So he started taking.  
“Last Sunday I went to The Parking. I was simply there, I wasn’t doing anything, I promise… but the police came. They came just like that, and everybody ran away and they caught some of them and hit them and… Well, they caught me. They made me stay at the prison cell for the night until my brother came in the morning and got me out. They asked me lots of questions, but I didn’t reply any of them. I am lucky I had already sold all the pills I was carrying, though. When my brother came he was so damn pissed I thought he was going to beat me just there, I swear.”  
Zayn made a pause and Harry looked at him. “Is that all?”  
Zayn had spent the night at the prison cell before, so it wasn’t a big deal for any of them. But he shook his head.  
“No, there’s something else.”  
 _When Zayn got out from the prison cell his brother told him to go home as he could because he had helped enough by paying the bond, so Zayn started to walk home. Not much further away, the two Twins and another guy were waiting for him._  
 _“What’s up, baby. We were waiting for you.”_  
 _Zayn’s legs got ready to run. “What’s wrong?”_  
 _“Lots of things are wrong.” One Twin said. “Starting by the fact that someone told the police where our little reunions are made and some of our boys got really hurt, or caught, like you.”_  
 _“And what does all of that to do with me?” Zayn asked, though he knew._  
 _“Well, everything was perfect before you came back, you know? We still don’t know why would you want to tell the cops about all of this, maybe because we move much more money than you do, but we know it was you.”_  
 _“And why would I tell the fucking cops and then let them catch me? This is ridiculous. I’m off.”_  
 _Zayn tried to walk past them, but the third guy impeded it. He took Zayn sharply by his coat and smashed him against a wall, his feet barely touching the floor. One of The Twins immediately got a knife out of his pocket and pressed it against Zayn’s cheek, making it bleed._  
 _The Twin spoke to his ear as the other guy held him against the wall. “Listen carefully, Zayn Malik. My brother and I will find another place to keep doing whatever we want, and we won’t do anything to you as long as we don’t see your stupid face ever again, but if the cops come to our place again… We will find you, eh? So don’t tell anybody, you lil’ shit. And be careful. If we see you again, this fucking knife goes directly to your flabby belly, alright, lady?”_  
 _The third guy let him go and the Twin removed his knife from Zayn’s cheek, slicing a slick slice from his cheekbone to his jawline. The last Twin spat next to him and gave him a menacing look before the three of them left._  
 _“And we thought you were different…” He said, chuckling. “Bullshit.”_  
Harry looked at the almost healed slice on his left cheek, half of it covered by his beard, and felt a stab in his stomach.  
“At least they are not looking for me.” Zayn said. “But I’m scared to go out… I mean, The Twins don’t go to the same places as we do, but if any of their boys sees me… I don’t know what they’d do.”  
Harry looked ahead and took a deep breath before speaking. “It was me who told the police. I made an anonymous call and told them where The Parking is.”  
Zayn’s eyes widened. “What? You did what?”  
“I am sorry, Zayn, I didn’t know this would happen.” Harry said quickly as Zayn got up, starting to walk around the room. “I didn’t want you to keep going there, and I thought that calling the cops would be a good idea… I’m so sorry, I just…”  
“How did you know where it is?”  
Harry shrugged. “I talked to the right people. They didn’t tell me the exact place, but I guessed it. I had nothing to lose I guess…”  
“Well, now I have _a lot_ to lose. My fucking life, for example.”  
Harry buried his head in his hands and controlled his own breathing as Zayn kept walking around the room, his hands desperately roaming through his hair. He was cursing quietly until he let out a lout yell and crashed his right fist against the wall, hurting his knuckled really bad.  
Harry got up immediately. “Zayn!”  
“Shit, Harry!” Zayn cried, turning around to look at him, his eyes red. “Those guys murder people just like that! Their father has assassins! They are a fucking mafia, Harry, don’t you understand that? If someone tells them that you have been asking about The Parking they will know you did it and go for you! They will have _no_ mercy to you, do you know what does that mean? They will fucking kill you!”  
Zayn was shaking in anger and fear, his voice was broken and he had to dry his eyes before any tear could fall down his cheeks. Harry listened to him eyes closed as he spoke, all his muscles clenched as he wished Zayn would stop. But when he shushed he kept walking from one side of the room to another, looking desperate.  
“If someone tells them and they go for you…” He kept saying with broken voice as he rubbed his forehead hard. “If someone hurts you…”  
Harry couldn’t bear seeing him like that, so he took a few steps forward -a bit awkwardly at first- until he reached the boy, and made him stop from walking by holding his body against him. He held Zayn in his arms and felt him shaking from all the anger and fear, and Zayn let Harry rub his back and breathe words to calm him down to his ear.  
“Nobody will do anything to me, Zayn, I’m sure. I promise everything will be alright, I promise.”  
Both of them knew he shouldn’t be promising anything because it didn’t depend on him, but the words tasted nice and necessary in that moment.  
“Nobody will do anything to you because I won’t let them fucking touch you.”  
Slowly, Zayn stopped shaking and his breathing became normal again. He rested his forehead where Harry’s neck and shoulder united, just like Harry did days before, and they stayed like that for a long time. Zayn liked to feel Harry’s heart beat against his, it calmed him down and made him feel home for the first time in that house.  
Feeling encouraged by it, Zayn moved his head up to Harry’s mouth and tried to kiss him, but Harry pushed him away gently and smiled.  
“Can I take a bath?”  
Zayn smiled, disappointed, but nodded. “Sure.” 

 

The door was half open so Zayn carefully pushed it trying not to make any crackling sound and disturb his friend.  
His head sneaked into the bathroom and for a few seconds he only saw hot steam that stick to his face and made little warm drops, but when the steam dissipated he saw Harry inside the bath. The bright lights of the room combined with the translucent stream made his skin look smooth and the hot wet air made his forehead sweat, the drops running down his temples, next to his closed eyes, and disappearing on his jawline. His head and arms were resting over the radiant white of the tub as his chest went up and down, the water covering it when he inspired and making it glow when he expired, up and down, up and down… Up, to his pronounced collarbones, down, to his strong abdomen.  
To Zayn, he looked like some sort of hypnotizing creature, almost mythical, even magical, like an endless and holy animal. And he didn’t want to say anything or do anything because the glimpse was too beautiful, lovely, but he realized that, in fact, he was peeping.  
He cleared his throat to make Harry notice.  
“Hey, Zayn, what’s up?”  
He was visibly uncomfortable by Zayn’s presence there, but he approached and sat on a stool next to Harry, shaking mildly.  
“There are two pizzas and some ice cream in the fridge. I am going to put them in the oven and we can eat the ice cream for dessert; I’m starving.”  
Harry nodded and then closed his eyes again, sinking his body in the hot water to his neck. Then, he sighed.  
“What’s wrong?”  
“Nothing, I’m just a bit tired.” Zayn knew he was lying. “We can listen to music and drink some beers after we have dinner.”  
“Yes, sure.”  
They stayed in silence for a few seconds and it bothered Zayn; if that situation had happened three months ago, it wouldn’t have been awkward.  
“I must look like a wet dog.” He said, as if he was reading his mind.  
“No.” Zayn replied very, very lowly. “I think you look great.”  
Harry opened an eye to look at him and smiled arrogantly, like he already knew he was looking great and loved it. Zayn bit his lower lip and closed his eyes hard before speaking,  
“I am cold as well, may I… come in?”  
This time, Harry opened both of his eyes and looked directly to Zayn’s. His face was looking rough and his eyebrows were frowned. Zayn swore a thousand of times to himself and glanced to the floor, escaping those two eyes that were trying to explore inside his mind.  
Harry noticed how nervous he got just by the way he was moving his legs and rubbing his hands together.  
“I… I didn’t mean with you. I meant I would like a bath too, I just…”  
“Zayn, hey, Zayn.” He grabbed his friend’s wrist with his wet hand. “It’s ok.”  
Zayn got up as if the contact gave him an electro shock and looked down at Harry. He was feeling worse than ever, he was feeling sick and needed to get out of there.  
And he did, he quickly got out of the bathroom and went to his bedroom, desperately looking for his shoes to go outside.  
It didn’t took much time for Harry to come out from the tube and follow Zayn’s steps, finding him on the floor looking under his bed.  
“I am looking for my fucking shoes.” He said without turning to look at Harry. “But they fucking disappeared. You never find nothing when you are looking for it, huh?”  
Zayn’s exalted voice contrasted to Harry’s, that only tried to relax him.  
“Why are you looking for your shoes, Zayn?”  
“I need some fresh air.” He got up and looked at Harry -who was standing on the doorframe- for a second. He was only wearing a towel. “They must be at the living room.”  
He tried to get out of the room but Harry put a hand over his chest.  
“Please, Zayn, seat.” He pointed at Zayn’s bed with his head and applied more strength to his chest as he tried to leave again. “Zayn, please.”  
He did, he sat on his bed and didn’t look at Harry when he sat centimeters away. He could feel the heat of his body so close it made him move away. Harry noticed.  
“Why did you do that?”  
“You are making me feel uncomfortable.” He said coldly.  
“But you just said you wanted to take a bath with me.”  
“Yeah, I know. I say a lot of things randomly.”  
Harry took a deep breath and looked at Zayn, whose eyes were fixed on the floor and his jaws clenched so hard he thought his teeth would break.  
Harry knew there was so much stuff going on Zayn’s mind that he could just go crazy, there was so much more stuff going on Zayn’s mind than there was on his, and his was unbearable.  
“Say what’s on your mind, Zayn.”  
“I was wondering what is on yours, actually.”  
“I… I don’t know, too much.”  
“Yeah. Exactly.”  
Harry buried his face in his hands and then let his back fall on the bed.  
Zayn looked at Harry for an instant and then turned his back to him. “Would you like to take that bath with me, Harry? Would you even like me to kiss you just right now, or would you reject me again?”  
Harry didn’t reply, and Zayn sink. It felt like the weight of the whole building just fell over him and crushed his body. He felt his eyes blurring and his stomach shrinking with a combination of anger, pain and fear.  
“You can leave my house whenever you feel like, but please do it before I come back.”  
Zayn got up was about to leave the room when Harry called his name.  
“Zayn, wait, please.” He said. “I want you to kiss me, all the time.”  
Zayn turned around slowly.  
“I want to kiss you all the time, but I never know if I should do it or… wait for it to happen. I swear I am always trying to kiss you, but when you do it… when things get too serious… I just can’t do it.”  
Zayn approached him and stepped in front of him, and suddenly he felt everything around them. The window open, moving the curtains with gelid air, the little bedside lamp doing its best to light, the stain of water that Harry was leaving on his bed, his wet hair falling in messy locks over his face and neck, the sweet pink of his trembling lips and the trembling green of his sweet eyes. His naked torso, cold by the wind.  
“Can I ask you a question, Harry?”  
“Anything.”  
“Are you confused about this?”  
“Very.”  
“Are you afraid?”  
“That’s two questions.”  
“Answer me.”  
Harry did a pause to swallow but never looked away.  
“Very.”  
Zayn’s hands landed on Harry’s neck and caressed it carefully before taking the back of his head firmly, both boys looking into each other’s eyes.  
“I am going to kiss you now.” Zayn said. “I am going to kiss you and you won’t be afraid, and tomorrow you won’t act like this didn’t happen. Okay?”  
“Okay.”  
Harry was frozen, but when Zayn pressed his lips against his it felt like a light has possessed his body. His hands were now in the back of Zayn’s head too, both of them trying to get as much as the other one as they could. Harry opened his mouth to let Zayn’s tongue in and let out an almost inaudible moan.  
It was warm, insanely warm, it felt terrible and wet and he loved it.  
Zayn broke the kiss and Harry felt empty and desperate and held the boy’s hand in his as he laid himself on the bed, closing his eyes again as he felt Zayn’s warm kisses on his neck, behind his ear for ridiculously pleasurable seconds and then down to his collarbones, shoulders, his arms and his hands, then his chest and his abdomen, getting really down and making Harry get hard, grabbing the quilt in anticipation. Zayn was covering him in kisses like the beautiful creature he thought he was.  
“Zayn, are you going to go down… on there?”  
“Only if you want me to…”  
He looked at Zayn for a second and nodded. He let his head fall back on the mattress and closed his eyes harsh when Zayn removed his towel.  
“Okay, mate, I’m going to need some help here.”  
Harry laughed.  
“Do what you do to yourself.”  
“Well, I wish I would suck my own dick, but I don’t, so… I think you’ll have to tell me if I’m doing it right.”  
Harry frowned when he heard the word ‘suck’. He thought he was going just to…  
“Ok, Harry?”  
“Yes, yes, ok.”  
Harry could hear a smile on Zayn’s voice, but the truth’s that he was shaking. He kissed Harry’s thighs first, and before he could do anything else Harry approached his hand to his on an invitation to grab it, and then held it tight.  
“Shit.”  
Zayn started to stroke his shaft with his free hand carefully, still shaking, and kissed Harry’s tip twice before giving it a gentle suck. Then, he looked up at Harry and saw how he was biting his lower lip hard and that encouraged him. He wanted to make Harry feel good, he wanted to make him feel the best he could, so he started to suck him hard, yet slowly, and take more and more of him inside.  
“Keep going, Zayn.” He said, one of his hands tangled on Zayn’s head to encourage him. “That’s it, just like that.”  
Zayn didn’t stop until Harry was done and fully relaxed on the bed, and went up to kiss his lips, still rubbing his entire body, all made of goosebumps. Harry tasted himself on Zayn’s mouth and closed his eyes.  
“Was it good?”  
“It was the best one I ever had.”  
Zayn smiled, because Harry had tons of them. Zayn lied next to Harry and looked at him and smiled sweetly, but his smile turned into a naughty smirk.  
“I think I should return you the favour.”  
Zayn looked down at himself and realized how uncomfortable his trousers felt, but shook his head.  
“You don’t have to if you don’t want.”  
But Harry kissed his lips and managed to hover Zayn’s body without breaking the kiss as one hand travelled down his body until it reached the zipper of his trousers.  
“I do want.” He said, unzipping them and roughly entering one hand under his boxers.  
Zayn was slow and gentle, otherwise, Harry was passionate and rough. When he wanted something he had to get it in that exact moment, and in that exact moment he wanted to feel Zayn and pleasure him as much as he could, he needed to hear Zayn’s moans and he needed to hear his name on his mouth, closing his eyes in pure pleasure.  
He wanted his best friend to be his, entirely and right then, because they’d have time later to think about the consequences.  
Zayn helped him taking off his trousers and his t-shirt, and Harry kissed his whole body just like the boy did to him before, but Zayn was very eager, unable to handle the teasing.  
“Come on, Harry.”  
Harry laughed against his lips and palmed him roughly over his boxers, making Zayn let out a shaky moan. He palmed him harshly with his big hand until he decided it was enough, and took off his boxers.  
Right then, when both of them were fully naked on Harry’s bedroom, even though the lights were off and the night was darker than before, reality hit them and they looked into each other’s eyes intensely.  
“Is this what you want, Zayn?”  
The seconds Zayn took to answer seemed incredibly long for both of them, but it only made them realize how much they needed each other.  
“Yeah, Harry, this is exactly what I want.” Zayn whispered. “And I want you to… I want you to make love to me right now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> Please, please, please, comment or like.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zayn and Harry spend the day together at Zayn's. :)  
> I couldn't reread it to correct the mistakes, so it might have some. Sorry!

Chapter 11.  
It seemed like the daylight wanted to have Zayn awake; show him that it was a great day. Clean sunbeams were seeping from the window with the white light that only winter has, and millions of tiny dust motes were flying in the room, landing everywhere.  
He stretched in his bed and scratched his sleepy eyes. He turned his head to the left, knowing that Harry was there, and smiled under a yawn. He was lying on his side, his back turned to Zayn and the blankets only covering him up to his waist, allowing the daylight to shine on his bare back, only half of it gleaming, the other one resting in shadows.  
Zayn stared at the way it widened and narrowed as Harry breathed, slowly and deep, and wanted to draw his muscles with one finger and trail it down his spine to where the blankets were covering him, but he wasn’t sure about it so he got up and rounded the bed to approach the window.  
He looked through it and smiled, seeing a white layer covering the ground.  
“Did it snow?”  
Zayn turned around when he heard Harry’s voice behind him. He had his palms pressed against each other as some kind of pillow, his cheek resting over both of them. His lips were redder than usual, and his eyes were only half open.  
Zayn smiled. “Yeah. Good morning.”  
Harry yawned turning around until he was lying on his back with his arms up in the air, stretching them from his shoulders to his fingers, and for a few seconds he was in that state where you don’t remember anything, you are still asleep but your eyes are open and you don’t have any kind of worry. Then, abruptly, he got out from that state and his arms fell heavily on the bed. He glanced at Zayn, who was still looking through the window, and frowned. He had a flashback from the night before and got a twitch in his stomach.  
“Hey, Zayn…” He said, playing with his hands over his stomach. “About last night, I don’t know if…”  
Zayn cut him off. “I’m going to prepare some toasts for breakfast. Do you want a tea?”  
Harry nodded even though Zayn couldn’t see him and watched him walk towards the door. Harry called him when he was on the doorframe and he stopped.  
“And an orange, please. I also want an orange.”  
Zayn didn’t say anything or moved a muscle; he stayed still at the doorframe for a few seconds and then walked away, leaving Harry alone in the room.  
He turned around until he was lying on his stomach and rested his head on the pillow, closing his eyes to the sun. He heard Zayn opening and closing drawers at the kitchen, and also the sound of his bare feet over the wood, and those sounds lulled him. His mind wandered to a memory of the night before, in the middle of the night, when he was so cold he was shaking and the blankets weren’t enough, so Zayn rounded his body with one arm and pressed his body to Harry’s, warming him up. He remembered himself intertwining his fingers around Zayn’s and kissing his fingers, one by one, thanking him.  
Then, he remembered what Zayn said before they had sex.  
 _“I am going to kiss you now. I am going to kiss you and you won’t be afraid, and tomorrow you won’t act like this didn’t happen. Okay?”_  
And what he replied.  
 _“Okay.”_  
Harry struggled under the blankets and shut his eyes harder, growling in a desperate voice. All of a sudden, he got up and started to dress himself up, slowly, his hands shaking. He approached the door but stopped there, his heart pounding hard.  
“Oh, fuck it Harry. Be a man for the first time in your life.”  
And he walked to the kitchen, finding Zayn making two cups of tea, and slid his arms around Zayn’s waist, pressing their bodies together and resting his chin on Zayn’s shoulder. Harry closed his eyes, breathing slowly and enjoying the smell of food as Zayn froze, feeling the warmness of Harry’s body again.  
“I wasn’t going to say that this didn’t mean anything, Zayn. I swear.”  
“Maybe you weren’t going to say it, but you thought about it. And you promised you wouldn’t even think about it.”  
“No, it’s not like that…” Harry spoke in a soft voice, making the skin behind Zayn’s ear tingle. “It’s just that this is the first real sex I have ever had and it feels weird because it was with my best _boy_ friend… Can you understand that?”  
Zayn nodded. “Yeah.”  
Harry extended an arm and took a toast from the plate in front of them, giving it a crackling bite. He hummed while chewing and then smiled.  
“This tastes really nice. Can we have breakfast in bed?”  
Zayn nodded.  
“Great! I’ll take these, you bring the tea. I’m so hungry!”  
Harry pulled away from Zayn and grabbed the plates with the toasts and the orange, smiling to him and ignoring Zayn’s serious face. He kissed Zayn on his cheek before leaving the room. When Zayn wasn’t looking anymore, his face turned serious as well.  
He put the plates over the bed and sat on it with his legs crossed, starting to peel the orange. When Zayn entered he smiled and showed him the orange he was chewing, making Zayn laugh for the first time. They sat next to each other and ate in silence, Zayn looking through the window and Harry looking at Zayn.  
When he ate the last section of the orange he let out a long sigh and moved closer to Zayn, resting his head over his shoulder.  
“Zayn, I’m sorry. Please, don’t be mad at me…”  
Zayn shook his head. “I’m not mad.”  
“So don’t be worried.” Harry replied immediately, removing his head from his shoulder and looking at Zayn in the eyes. “It’s not that I don’t like you, Zayn, I like you like you so damn much. But I’m an asshole.” Harry made a pause and drink from his tea. “I’d never hurt you, Zayn. It’d be like hurting myself.”  
Zayn smiled in a tired way and Harry smiled back, tilting his head to one side like a little animal and getting those dimples in his cheeks that made him irresistibly cute to Zayn’s eyes. Zayn rolled his eyes back and threw his head up to the ceiling, letting a guttural laugh get out from his throat.  
“What?” Harry laughed as well. “What are you laughing at?”  
Zayn shrugged and laughed again, still looking up to the ceiling. Harry glanced back at Zayn and felt so amazed by the sight, specially by his strong and long neck, that he bit on it, making the other boy growl in pain until he started to suck on it, under his jawline, and Zayn closed his eyes. Harry moved until he was on his knees over the bed, rubbing Zayn’s shoulders underneath his t-shirt as he kept sucking and slowly laid him down on the bed, one hand at each side of Zayn’s head. He stopped sucking under his jawline and moved up to his ear, traversing the outline of it with his lips and making Zayn shiver.  
Harry moved sharply and spilled out the tea that was over the bed. “Oh, shit, I’m sorry.”  
He managed to move away from Zayn to pick the cup up but Zayn grabbed him by his t-shirt. Never mind, this bed is crap, he said, and pulled him closer to him until their lips were touching, and it was the most intimate kiss any of them had ever had, one of those kisses that make you blush when you think about them.  
It was slow, eyes closed but eyelashes fluttering, and a slight taste of orange and toast tingling in their mouths. They got goosebumps all over their skin, even in the back of their necks, where they were holding each other.  
When they broke the kiss they felt like hanging from a cliff, panting and dizzy, and Harry smiled while breathing the same air as Zayn.  
“I want to go outside.”  
“Oh, no.” Zayn protested. “It’s freezing, Harry.”  
“Please.” He pecked Zayn’s lips repeatedly. “Please, please, please.”  
Zayn growled but Harry ignored him, getting up and grabbing his coat. Zayn looked at him from the bed and begged him to come back with him.  
“Come on, I want to play with the snow.”  
Zayn smirked. “We can play here, too.”  
Harry looked down at him and licked his lips, biting on his upper lip, and considered the idea. Zayn was too much of a temptation, but he really liked making him frustrated and pissed, so he threw his coat to him and told him to get up.  
“Make me.”  
Harry clenched his jaws; that was too much. The way he said it while looking at him, lying on the bed with that massive smirk on his lips…  
Harry walked towards him and bent down to attack his lips, kissing roughly, biting on his lower lip and pulling it as his left hand roamed all over his torso. Then, he pulled away and looked at Zayn, who was panting and biting on his own lip, just where Harry did seconds before.  
“Get up. Now. And I’ll suck you off later.”  
Zayn’s face blushed so much his cheeks burned and Harry let out an amused giggle. Then, he walked to the door and turned around to look at Zayn, who was still lying on the bed, confused.  
“Come on!”  
He got up quickly and dressed in warmer clothes. 

 

The snow was so cold it made Harry’s hands bleed sometimes, but he didn’t care at all. Zayn watched him as he finished a snowman, biting his own tongue in concentration as he tried to make the face with his red fingers.  
“Do you need any help?”  
“No!” He replied. “This snowman is mine.”  
They were doing a snowmen contest; the one with the best snowman, wins. Easy, but not for Harry, who’s snowman looked like someone had just ran over it.  
“Aaaalright… Done.”  
Harry moved away to look at his work and frowned. Then, he looked at Zayn’s work and frowned even more.  
“I think I won.”  
“It’s not fair, you do graffiti and that shit…”  
Zayn laughed. “So what? It has nothing to do with snowmen…”  
“Yeah but you know more about art and doing pretty things and…”  
“Don’t be a whiny baby.” Zayn teased. “Mine is better, end off.”  
Harry’s mouth dropped open and he quickly grabbed a big handful of snow from his snowman head and threw it to Zayn, hitting him on the chest.  
“Hey! Why was that for?”  
“You being a cocky asshole.”  
Zayn smirked. “Yeah?”  
Harry nodded. “Yeah.”  
“Come here.”  
Zayn tried to reach him but Harry ran away from him, slipping one foot and falling heavily on the floor. Zayn was laughing so much his stomach ached and he had to close the eyes to stop the tears. Harry, looking for revenge, took advantage of his closed eyes and got up silently to jump on him later, making both of them fall over the snow.  
Zayn groaned in pain, but couldn’t stop laughing. “You are violent, Harry.”  
He felt the snow soak his coat as Harry crawled over him, resting the weight of his torso over Zayn’s, smiling while lying on him. When Zayn stopped laughing he looked at Harry, his green eyes, and blinked slowly. Harry blushed a bit and looked away, feeling his heart beat faster.  
“Let’s go inside.” Zayn whispered. “Okay?”  
“Okay.”  
They got up and Harry followed him to the door, patiently waiting as he opened it, but the following second Zayn closed the door, Harry slammed him against the wall and kissed him hard, sliding his hands underneath Zayn’s shirt and rubbing his cold and wet back, making him gasp at the contrast of temperatures.  
Harry had him trapped against the wall, both of his arms preventing him from moving; however, he managed to turn positions and now he had Harry against the wall. He buried his face in his neck and let his body fall against his, pressing their hips together. Zayn started to rub his against Harry’s and the curly boy let out sloppy mewls as he licked his lips. As Zayn sucked on his neck, Harry managed to slip a hand between their hips and rubbed Zayn’s crotch hard.  
Zayn moved away from Harry’s neck and threw his head back. “Harry, Harry, Harry…”  
Harry smirked and pushed Zayn away, turning positions again so Zayn was against the wall, resting the back of his head on it as he closed his eyes.  
“Sh, sh, sh…” Harry spoke to his ear, still rubbing him through his clothes. “I said I’d suck you off, right?”  
The only thing Zayn could do was nod repeatedly. Harry, slowly -maybe too slowly-, unbuttoned his jeans and unzipped them, pulling them down. Still breathing against Zayn’s ear he slipped a hand inside his boxers and smirked when he gasped. Again, he felt a big difference of temperature: Harry’s hands were too cold and he was too hot.  
Harry kissed his neck once before going on his knees.  
“Right here?” Zayn asked, but Harry didn’t reply.  
He simply pulled down Zayn’s boxers and grabbed his erect cock, giving it a couple of strokes before entering the tip inside his mouth, sucking hard. Zayn closed his eyes again and let out a very long sigh, tugging on Harry’s hair.  
It felt incredible, Harry’s warm mouth surrounding him and taking him as deep as he could, chocking on it because it was too big but he didn’t care because he wanted to make Zayn feel good, so he looked up at him and their eyes met, making Zayn let out a moan by seeing him like that, looking so damn dirty when he also could look like the most innocent creature, with those incredibly beautiful green eyes, now full of lust… Zayn wanted to corrupt him, know his wildest side, see him as a trembling mess, sweating and panting and begging for more as his toes curled and his nails scratched his back.  
Zayn groaned. “God, the things I wanna do to you.”  
He felt himself twitch and Harry told him to let go –so he did.  
“Shit, Harry. That was…”  
But he didn’t let him finish, he got up and kissed him harsh, making him taste himself on Harry’s mouth, still pumping his cock slowly.  
“Lets go to the bedroom.”  
Zayn put his boxers on again and followed Harry to his bedroom, his cock getting hard again just by the thought of it. The night before they made love, gently and slowly, but now he only wanted to fuck.  
When they reached the room Zayn closed the curtains of the window and turned the lights off -he liked it when it was all dark- and told Harry to lie on the bed. He did, and Zayn crawled on top of him, not caring about the dishes and the couple of cups over the bed, and sat on his crotch, leaning forward to kiss him, not letting a second for their hearts to settle. He took Harry’s hands in his and pulled them up his head, on the bed, making him unable to move as they kissed and Zayn started to roll his hips against Harry’s, making him harder underneath his sweatpants as he tried to release his hands from Zayn’s but he couldn’t because he didn’t have any strength on his body anymore, he was completely boneless as Zayn kissed and bit his lips, then his jawline, down to his neck and collarbones, and he wanted to keep going down and down but he couldn’t because he’d have to remove his hands, and he knew that if he removed his hands Harry would be the one in control and _fuck_ , Zayn wanted to be the one possessing him then, doing what he wanted to him, so he just kept rolling his hips and making Harry moan and throw his hips up to met Zayn’s, who was sucking behind his ear, in the spot that made his lungs run out of air and his toes curl.  
“Please.” Harry panted, eyes closed.  
Zayn breathed to his ear. “Please what?”  
“Fuck me.”  
Zayn groaned at those words and bit his lip so hard he thought he would draw blood, and he didn’t care anymore so he let Harry go and he immediately moved his hand down to Zayn’s ass slipping them underneath his boxers, tugging it and pushing it closer to his own crotch, Zayn feeling Harry’s well erect cock inside his sweatpants.  
Harry was about to take off his sweatpants when they heard the front door opening and shutting. They looked at each other, eyes wide, and immediately pulled away.  
“Crap.”  
Zayn got up from the bed quickly and wore a pair of jeans that would cover his hard-on and opened the curtains, letting the daylight fill the room. Harry, however, put the pillow over his crossed legs and tried to act natural as Zayn’s brother walked into the room.  
“What are you doing here?”  
“Who’s this?” Brad ignored Zayn’s question and looked at Harry while frowning.  
“He’s Harry, my best mate.”  
“Whatever.” He replied. “What has happened to this room? It looks like a hurricane had passed through it. Where’s Dad?”  
“I don’t know, he didn’t come around tonight.”  
“That fucking oldster…” His brother murmured, going through the room and inspecting it. “You know you two owe me money, right? How are you going to pay me?”  
Zayn sat on the bed next to Harry and held his hand behind his back so Brad wouldn’t see. Harry gave him a little squeeze.  
“We will pay you next weekend, Brad. I’ll go somewhere to sell the pills we have left and we’ll have enough money to give you. Alright?”  
Brad looked at him from the corner of his eyes, but nodded.  
“Okay.” He said. “But if you don’t have the money by the next week, I’ll sell this house and you’ll have to sleep on the street. Understand?”  
Zayn clenched his jaws and looked fixedly at him, not answering his question and trying to intimidate him, or at least show him that he wasn’t under his control. Brad, however, chuckled and shook his head, smiling in an arrogant way.  
“And tidy your fucking room.”  
Both Harry and Zayn watching him walk away from the room and held their breaths until they heard the front door closing. Then, Zayn let his back fall against the bed.  
“He can’t do that, can he?” Harry asked, frowning.  
“Actually, he does.”  
Harry shook his head and gave another squeeze to Zayn’s hand. “Maybe you could move into my house.”  
They looked at each other for several seconds and then burst into laughter; that was the most ridiculous idea ever.  
“Yeah, and I could sleep with your dad. He’d love that.”  
They laughed again, releasing all the tension of the moment, and Harry let himself fall next to Zayn. He turned his face to look at him and smiled calmly, closing his eyes for a second as he took a deep breath. Zayn got a bit closer and moved his head, rubbing his nose against Harry’s, making him giggle.  
Then, they kissed, lying next to each other.  
“Take off those jeans again, Zayn.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading. :D  
> Please, please, please, comment or like!!


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am sorry for this chapter, I know it's a bit weird and messy, but yeah...   
> I hope you like it anyway, the story keeps going!! :)

Chapter 12.   
**The sought-after effects of cocaine are:**  
• a feeling of well-being, exhilaration and euphoria;  
• increased alertness and energy; and  
• delayed hunger and fatigue.

 **The possible short-term effects of cocaine are:**  
• loss of appetite;  
• faster breathing;  
• raised heart rate;  
• raised blood pressure;  
• an increase in body temperature which leads to sweating;  
• dilated pupils; and  
• strange, erratic, at times violent behavior.   
And Zayn was feeling just like that.   
The changing lights of the club made him dizzy, and the loud music penetrated in his ears so deep he thought they’d bleed, but he couldn’t stop. He needed to keep dancing, dancing and dancing and moving and moving until his feet hurt so much he couldn’t walk anymore.   
He wasn’t thinking about anything, he wasn’t feeling anything, his head only telling him ‘keep going, just keep going’, it said, ‘keep dancing or you’ll die’. He was sweating and panting and had a pretty little girl pressed against him, and he bit her neck and made her gasp, but he couldn’t hear it so he bit and suck harder until the girl turned around and licked his lips before kissing him harshly.   
For a few minutes he didn’t care at all because it felt nice and because ‘keep going; you’ll die’, but suddenly the strident song stopped and, in the five seconds it took the DJ to change the song, he wasn’t there anymore. The girl frowned, confused -and for a moment she thought she had imagined him, too damn pretty to be real.  
Zayn, however, wasn’t an imagination of anyone. He was real -although he sometimes felt like he wasn’t-, and he felt a sudden urge of knowing where Harry was, what was he doing, what was he thinking, what was he feeling.   
That desperate sensation made him breathless and anxious, and as he looked around himself everything started to turn too little, too crowded, too noisy, and felt scared.   
“You’ll die now.” His brain whispered into his ear, slowly, reproaching him for stopping dancing.   
He pushed everybody away as he made his way to the bar, where he saw Harry sitting next to Michelle, whispering something to her ear, and wondered if he was also telling her that she’d die, that he’d kill her, and that got furious because, if Harry killed her, she’d be a part of him, a work of his creation, and Zayn didn’t want Michelle to be anything of Harry’s.   
With those crazy thoughts in his mind he ordered a drink, but when the waiter gave it to him and asked for ten pounds, his eyes widened.  
“I’m not paying ten pounds for this bullshit.”  
“I don’t care. You ordered this, now you pay for it. I’m not letting the ice melt inside the glass and have to throw it away later.”   
Zayn looked at the guy in the eyes, and he almost took a step back. “I’m not paying for this. You hear me?”  
The waiter moved nervously at the other side of the bar. “Hey, listen, you…”  
But Zayn didn’t let him finish off the sentence. He took him by the neck of his working t-shirt and pulled him up, his torso over the bar making the drinks spill out everywhere. He looked at the scared waiter in the eyes, too close, when someone came to push them away, to what Zayn reacted violently, pretending to punch the guy until he saw it was Harry and left the fist hanging in the air.   
“What the fuck are you doing, mate?” He yelled to him, shaking him from the shoulders. “You have been acting like a fucking psycho all night.”  
Zayn looked into Harry’s eyes and felt a wave of a weird, relaxing sensation that felt good but confusing at the same time.   
He was about to reply when two big security guards took him from Harry’s arms as he tried to escape, pushing and kicking them. But nothing of that succeeded, because seconds after he was lying on the floor -they had pushed him out so hard he fell- as a cold wind was starting to freeze his face and eat his torso underneath his jacket. He got up heavily and lighted a cigarette to calm down his nerves.   
Minutes later, Harry went out as well. He looked around himself searching for Zayn, and spotted him a few meters away, smoking, his back to him so he could read HATE written on the back of his black jacket, like that, in caps and white. He was dressed all in black -even black eyes- except for that word in bright white, which made Harry think.   
He approached him and gave a drag to his cigarette without saying anything. Zayn waited patiently -though his left foot was moving hysterically- until Harry gave it back to him and gave it a long, deep drag.   
They didn’t say anything until Zayn finished the cigarette, the last embers shining on his dilated pupils as they were a lighthouse in the middle of a night. He dropped it and smashed it against the floor with his boots. Then, he looked at Harry.  
“What?”  
“How ‘what’?” He chuckled. “What happened inside?”  
Zayn shrugged. “I went crazy. I was high. I took cocaine.”  
“Aren’t you high anymore?”  
Zayn shook his head no and bit on his lower lip. Harry watched him, knowing that there was something he wanted to say but couldn’t manage to.   
“I’m just pissed, okay?” He spat out, feeling Harry’s sight on him. “You were with Michelle all night and I was alone. I guess I was jealous.”  
Harry laughed lowly, making Zayn look at him immediately. “That’s ridiculous.”  
“Yeah. I’m ridiculous.”  
With that, he walked away from Harry with his hands in his pockets and his lower lip almost bleeding by the pressure he was applying on it with his teeth.   
Harry growled, looking at both of his sides to check there was anybody at the parking, and ran a few steps until he approached Zayn, taking him by his belt and pulling him closer. Then, he turned him around and kissed his lips, taking his head on his hands and feeling the cold sweat that was streaming down Zayn’s cheeks over his own palms.   
It was a quick kiss to calm him down, but when he pulled away, Zayn looked as breathless and overexcited as he was back inside the club.   
“I said that’s ridiculous because you don’t need to be jealous of her. She means absolutely nothing.”  
“But you won’t break up with her, yeah?”  
Harry looked down to the floor for a second before speaking. “I saw you snogging that girl at the dancefloor. I could get mad as well, right?”  
“She meant absolutely nothing.” Zayn mimicked him, even his accent, making Harry laugh.   
“Seriously, Zayn…” He said after a few seconds of silence. “I will break up with her if you want me to, but I don’t think it’s a good idea. At least not yet.”  
“Why?”  
“I think she knows there’s… something between us. I don’t want her to tell everybody, you know? This is a small place.”  
Zayn nodded, but looked disappointed, so Harry kissed him again, deeper this time, slowly and gently massaging his tongue against Zayn’s, making him moan with his eyes closed. He sneaked both of his hands underneath Zayn’s jacket and warmed up his own hands, then entered them inside the back pockets of his dark jeans.   
Zayn gave Harry’s lips little bits, pulling the pink skin gently, and rubbed his pads up and down Harry’s neck, feeling the goosebumps on the sensitive skin and smiling through the kiss, both of them feeling each other’s heartbeat hard since they were kissing at the outside, at a frequented place, where they could be seen anytime.   
Zayn pulled away and rested his chin on Harry’s shoulder, who was rubbing his back as the other hand stayed inside his back pockets.   
“What else worries you, Zayn?”  
Zayn closed his eyes and took a deep breath.   
“I made 100 pounds tonight, and I need another 200 for my brother. He’ll be coming tomorrow and I don’t know what I could do.”  
Harry stayed in silence for a moment. “I know where my dad hides the money. I could steal some from him…”  
Zayn pushed away. “No, Harry, no way. I’ll do something; I’ll work on something to make more money. You don’t have to…”  
Harry nodded, agreeing, and made him rest his chin over his shoulder again.   
“Okay.” And kissed his lips again, thinking about how to steal the money from his father without him noticing. “Let’s go somewhere else.”

It was something both of them loved doing; just walking, with no direction, always ahead, always looking up to the sky -not caring if it was cloudy, or dark, or bright blue- because they wouldn’t see the grey buildings or the wet streets, with the cats running away from the big old cars, neither the sad women carrying their children, or the lost puppies whining to the tired and mad men that just came back from working twelve hours straight. If they looked up to the sky they wouldn’t see what their lives looked like.   
And for those seconds, minutes, hours -even days, if they could- that they walked next to each other, they could be anybody they wanted. And both Harry and Zayn imagined their new lives somewhere else, being themselves or other people, but they never told each other. At least not until that day.   
“Zayn.” Harry said in a whisper. Zayn nodded. “What do you think our lives would be if we lived in the city?”   
It took him some time to answer. “You know what? I know I always say I want to get out of here, live somewhere pretty and have a beautiful house with a TV so I can play the X-Box, but… I don’t think our lives would be much better, you know? There, everybody is busy; they don’t have time to think… They can’t take long walks as we do. They take the underground to go anywhere. I know life here is awful, it’s full of pain and violence, but at least it’s not lonely.”  
“You think they are lonely?”  
“Yeah.” Zayn nodded. “London is a lonely city. There are too many people and you don’t know anybody, and nobody knows you; you don’t love anybody, and nobody loves you. They are too busy to take time to look at each other in the eyes.” Zayn looked down, to his feet, and watched them move over the black asphalt. “That’s my opinion.”  
“So, you don’t feel lonely here?”  
Zayn shook his head. “Only when I miss my mom. I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and go to the kitchen to drink water, and I walk by my dad’s room thinking she will be there as well, lying next to him. But then she’s not, and I remember that she won’t be anymore. And that’s when I feel lonely.”  
A deep silence surrounded them, only broken by the sound of their taps on the ground. They were walking through a dark, empty street, and if they hadn’t had each other they would have been scared as hell.   
You can’t walk alone in the dark in a minor because you’ll get robbed, or stabbed. Or robbed and stabbed.   
“You know you are not lonely, right?”  
“I do.”  
“You know you have me.”  
“Yeah, I do.”   
“Do you know I love you?” Harry said, frowning. “I… I don’t think I’ve ever said it to you, but I do. You are my best mate, we’ve been through everything together and… Well, I think you are the only person I really need, like an _actual need_. And I don’t know if that’s good or bad -I guess bad-, but I know that I… Well, I don’t even remember my life before you came in it. Do you understand that?”  
Zayn felt something twitch inside him but nodded -though he didn’t understand. What did he mean? Why was he saying that?  
“I am not saying I’m in love with you, though I think I might, but…”  
Zayn looked up at him. “You what?”  
“No! I mean, I not only like you as a friend, yeah? That’s obvious…” Harry shook his head. “Jesus, I shouldn’t have said anything. I feel like an idiot now.”  
Harry stopped talking but Zayn didn’t say anything, not because he pretended to be rude or anything, but because he was thinking about what Harry just said.   
_“I am not saying I’m in love with you, though I think I might, but…”_  
But what?  
Being in love with someone, that’s big words. That means you’d do anything for that person, that means you are always thinking about that person, about kissing them and spending time with them, that also means you get those butterflies in your stomach when your eyes meet, and that means you want to wake up next to them and kiss their closed eyelids and stare at them and whisper in their ear…  
That’s what Zayn felt when he kissed Harry; -though sometimes he’d like to kill those butterflies- so was he in love?  
Am I in love?, he asked himself.   
Am I in love with my best friend?  
 _AmIinlovewithmybestfriend?_  
He shook his head, because he didn’t really care about it. Maybe he was in love, yeah, or maybe he wasn’t. He didn’t know, and he didn’t want to know, because… who does? Who wants to know that they have permission to feel butterflies and miss someone and call them in the middle of the night and cry when they think they don’t love them back?   
“What are you thinking about, Zayn?”  
“Butterflies.”  
Harry laughed softly. “Faggot.”  
Zayn looked up at him and laughed as well, causing Harry to laugh louder until both of them were laughing so hard -they were still a bit high- a baby started to cry inside someone’s house, and an angry woman came outside her balcony yelling that she’ll call the police, and moving her hands above her head and they ran away from her, ran and ran even though they didn’t need to, but they loved doing it, chasing each other until they reached a park and Harry fell on the grass -he let himself fall, actually- and Zayn fell next to him, both of them now lying on their backs, looking up to the dark sky and panting with their tongues out.   
“I love you too, Harry.” Zayn said then, turning his head to look him in the eyes. “Don’t know how, don’t know why, don’t know when, but… yeah.”  
He saw Harry’s lips curve into a big smile and felt him move until their faces were really close and Zayn could feel Harry’s breath against his mouth, and he parted it, inviting him to come in and don’t let him feel lonely ever again, not even a glimpse of that strange feeling that empties your soul.   
However, Harry wouldn’t have came closer and Zayn wouldn’t have parted his lips if they had seen the orange little spot that illuminated randomly, burning in the smoke of a cigarette; they wouldn’t have kissed if they had knew that they were being watched.   
At the other side of the road, sitting over a car, someone was calling on the phone with their eyes looking fixedly at the couple.  
“Hey, Twins? You have no idea what I’m looking at right now…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please please please leave kudos or comment!!!  
> It makes me REALLY happy!!  
> Thanks for reading. :)


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you like this chapter; the actual mess and the end start here.   
> Enjoy!!

Chapter 13.   
Zayn remembers himself more scared than ever, sitting on the couch with his legs crossed over it and his eyes looking through the window, trying not to cry. He also remembers his dad sitting on the floor, shaking from the fear, with his lower lip bleeding. He remembers his dad pleading to his brother for a few weeks more, just a few weeks more so they can give him the money back, two hundred pounds, that’s not too much, Zayn made one hundred in just one night, he kept saying.   
But Brad wasn’t willing to listen to him. He came inside the house and asked for the money. They said they didn’t have it, and Brad hit his father in the mouth. It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last one either.   
What was different this time were the menaces, the fact that he meant it when he said that he would sell the house and leave his father homeless and send Zayn to a reformatory in London.   
“I pay for fucking everything and you can’t even make 300 pounds! What the hell do you think I am, a fucking bank?”  
“Family.” Zayn murmured, tears flooding in his eyes. “You are family.”  
But, looking back to everything that had happened, Brad wasn’t family. Families help each other when they need it, and Brad only helped himself during his entire life. Now he was a rich businessman and a cocaine addict and made his own father shake from fear.   
“I’ve had enough. I’m selling this fucking house and lose sight of both of you. You only cause me problems, always depending. Be fucking adults for once, Jesus!”  
Zayn looked up at his brother with blurry eyes and fought a sob. “Please, Brad.”  
“No money, no deal.” He said coldly, looking at him in the eyes. “And stop crying; even a reformatory would be better than this.”  
Zayn looked away with a little whine and closed his eyes hard while shaking his head. No, a reformatory wouldn’t be better, because a reformatory means he wouldn’t be able to see Harry again. He would be alone in a cold room and he wouldn’t be able to feel Harry’s warm body on his, or hear his whispers, or laugh in the dark next to him.   
The bare thought made his chest ache, and he looked through the window again just in time to see Harry’s figure walking past by it, approaching the front door. Then, _ding dong_.   
Zayn’s heart was pumping hard as his brother went to open the door and an amazingly smiley Harry showed, his hands inside his brown jacket pockets and his body constricted from the cold. He jolted to shake off the cold and tried to keep his smile as he saw Zayn’s face and his father on the floor.   
“Hello.” He said, his eyes turning back to Brad. “I guess Zayn hasn’t told you because he thought he had lost them, but he didn’t. He forgot the 200 pounds he had at my house last night.” Harry took his right hand out of his pocket and offered a wad to Brad, who took it confused. “It’s all there I think, but you can count it.”  
Brad examined the money in his hands and, as he did it, Harry looked at Zayn and nodded one time. Zayn nodded back, feeling a warm relief inside his body, and felt his father’s sight over both of them.  
“Okay. It’s all here.” Brad felt even disappointed. “You should have told me, Zayn.”  
“Well, he was so scared last night when he thought he had lost them that he decided it’d be better not to tell you. Right, Zayn?” And Zayn nodded, agreeing with Harry. “I must go now. Have a nice day.”  
Harry closed the door behind him and took a deep breath, waiting for his heart to settle down. The tension back in there was horrible, and seeing Zayn like that, so pretty helpless, with tears in his eyes as his father was bleeding on the floor, scratched his soul deeply.   
Yeah, Harry could hate his own parents, but he couldn’t imagine what Zayn’s life was like. Always so scared…  
He started to walk back home, trying not to think about the consequences of stealing 200 pounds from his parents and leaning on the fact that he’d keep Zayn next to him for a little longer.   
As he walked he saw a big black guy sitting on a bench that was looking fixedly at him, but kept walking. Then, he felt him get up and walk after him for a few minutes, following him everywhere. Harry started to walk faster as he felt his heart pump harder and harder, hearing it on his ears. He walked faster until he actually ran as fast as he could, and the black guy ran after him, yelling.   
“Where do you think you’re going, lil’ faggie!”   
Harry tried to leave him behind, but the guy was faster than him and quickly caught him, crashing him against a wall and taking him by the neck.  
“You thought you could ran away from me, huh?” The black guy laughed. “None plays with me, Harry Styles.”  
The fact that he knew his name made him even more scared. “What do you want?”  
“Well, I want to hurt someone. And the best way of hurting that person is by hurting you.”  
And in that moment he understood everything. The Twins knew and had sent someone to beat him up, even kill him if he could. The Twins knew and, if this guy wouldn’t kill him, they’d make his and Zayn’s life a bloody hell.   
Harry tried to gulp but couldn’t; he could barely breathe.   
“What are you going to do to me?”  
The guy chuckled and removed his hand. Harry immediately rubbed his neck and looked at him, at his rough smile and yellow eyes.   
“The Twins told me to scare you a bit, but the truth’s that I hate queers. None’s gonna miss you, right?”  
Harry was shaking. He could fight back, but there was no way he could beat that guy, and there was no way he could run away either.   
_None’s gonna miss you, right?_  
As the guy lifted his fist the only thing he was thinking about was Zayn. He closed his eyes when he saw the punch coming, but no punch came. Instead, he heard a thud and the heavy crash of a body falling to the floor.   
Harry opened his eyes and saw Zayn sitting over the guy, hitting repeatedly on his face, making him bleed and groan in intense pain. He was murmuring things through clenched teeth as he did it and Harry fell on his knees behind them, staring at the scene with wide eyes and a panting heart.   
Zayn eventually stopped and got up, kicking him on one side. “Get up, asshole! Come on, get up!”   
The guy got up heavily and slowly, looking up at Zayn with tired anger in his eyes. His face had lots of slices and his mouth and nose had rivers of blood. He was unrecognizable.   
“Tell those fucking twins to stay away from me and my best friend. You get it, Adrien? Now go away.” Zayn spoke inches away from the big black guy as he breathed blood, but didn’t move a muscle. “Shit, I said go away!”  
And Adrien left, running like a possessed, the taps of his strides echoing in the street. Zayn stared as he ran, then turned around to look at Harry when the guy faded away.   
He squatted in front of him. “Are you ok?”  
“Yeah, I’m fine.”  
“You don’t look fine. You look damn scared.”  
Harry looked into Zayn’s eyes and saw the worry in them. He smiled gently and Zayn caressed his cheek with his pads, drawing the outline of his jaws.   
“None will scare you anymore.” Zayn whispered. “None will touch you.”  
Harry nodded, closing his eyes as he let Zayn caress him. “Thank you.”  
“You would have done the same for me.” He replied. “Come on, I’ll help you get up.”  
Harry took Zayn’s hand in his and jumped, standing on his feet right in front of Zayn. They looked at each other again, without releasing their hands, and Zayn noticed Harry was still shaking.  
“Harry, hey, don’t be scared. I’m here.”  
“I know. I know.”  
Zayn smiled. “So?”  
“So I saw what anger means in that guy’s eyes.”  
“Forget about it.”  
“Yeah, but Zayn, he was going to…”  
“Sh, Harry. I said forget about it.”  
And with that Harry nodded and let Zayn’s arms round his body, resting his head on Zayn’s shoulder and breathing deep, calming himself down with the warmness that his embrace made him feel, outside on his skin, and deep inside his soul.  
“Why went you outside?” Harry asked against his shoulder.  
“I wanted to thank you for the money.”  
“You would have done the same for me.” He said, just like Zayn did minutes before. “What’s going to happen with the house?”  
“We’re keeping it, but I can’t cause any trouble or my brother will send me to a reformatory in London.”  
Harry held him closer when he said that like he feared he would disappear any moment, and Zayn grabbed his chin and made him look at him, causing Harry’s heart beat faster than it did before, his sight traveling from Zayn’s eyes down to his mouth over and over, wanting to kiss the boy but waiting for him to do it.   
And Zayn did, he kissed him slowly and deeply, and again his soul felt warm, it felt safe like looking through the window when it’s raining and you are inside watching a movie with a blanket and a hot chocolate, safe like hearing your dad’s heavy breathing when you’re little and scared at night, or like feeling loved by the person you love.   
In that moment, none of them feared that anybody would see them, and they didn’t care about what people would say if they knew, they didn’t mind that The Twins would tell everybody, because they had each other, and if they had each other…  
“And then you say I’m the strong one.” Harry laughed when the kiss broke. “And I can’t even defend myself.”  
Zayn was about to speak when Harry looked down at his hands and frowned, staring at the flayed skin and the little blood on his knuckles, and the bruises around them. Zayn tried to hide them in his pockets but Harry took them in his hands, and pulled them up to his mouth. Then, he kissed each one of Zayn’s knuckles gently, pressing his pink lips to the wounds.   
Zayn watched him do it as he felt something twitch inside him. “I wouldn’t be strong if it wasn’t for you.”  
Harry smiled and rested his forehead on Zayn’s, rounding his waist with his arms again and resting the weight of his body on him. Then, both of them closed their eyes and encompassed their breathings.   
“Is it true that he only way of hurting you is by hurting me?” Harry asked in a whisper. He felt Zayn nod. “You know you shouldn’t depend on me, right?”  
“You shouldn’t depend on me either.”   
“Yeah, I know. But I can’t control it.” Harry breathed deep. Then, he pulled away. “We’re fucked, aren’t we?”  
“Kind of. Yeah.”  
They looked at each other for a few seconds before bursting into laughter, both of them knowing that they needed each other so bad the absence of one of them would be the end of the other one. It may be sick, or maybe romantic, but it’s the way it was.   
“I have to come back home now, Zayn.”  
Zayn escorted Harry to his house and they stopped at the same corner they always did, just before Harry’s house.   
Again, it was Harry against the concrete wall and Zayn pressed to him, exploring his body underneath his t-shirt like every inch of his skin was a mountain to discover, or a new river to drink from, with fast waters rushing along it.  
And again, Harry kept saying he had to go home, and Zayn kept asking for five more minutes as if he had to get up from bed to school.  
And again, Harry gave him those five minutes because he loved the way Zayn felt on his body, even the scratch of his beard over the sensitive skin of his neck, which got goosebumps anytime Zayn’s tongue sucked on it.   
And yes, once again, the soft moans and gasps that escaped Harry’s mouth as Zayn kissed everywhere turned him on very much, causing him to press his hips to Harry’s, needing his body right there.  
But, in the end, as usual, Harry got to slip away from Zayn’s arms with a childish smirk that made him want Harry even more, but he had to say goodbye once again and watch him walk past the corner, hating the fact that it always ended up like that, but loving the fact that Harry always turned around and smiled to him just before disappearing.   
And Zayn walked home as well, thinking that Harry was what ‘family’ means; someone who’s always there, someone who will never let you down, someone who helps you and wants nothing as a reward. 

Harry entered his house with a wide smile on his lips and closed the door behind him, not ready to find his father with crossed arms over his chest and the roughest face.  
“Harry, where the fuck are the 200 pounds you stole from us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please, please, please, leave kudos or comment, it makes me a happy girl.  
> Thanks for reading!!


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you like this chapter!! The rough day continues...

Chapter 14.  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  
But Harry did, and his father knew he was lying. He looked at his son with the most horrible eyes and clenched his jaws, containing his anger. Harry shook his head and pushed his father away to walk inside the living room, where his mother was, with a deep worried look in her eyes.   
“Harry, please, just tell us.” She said. “Have you spent it on drugs?”  
“What?” He chuckled. “On drugs, 200 pounds? What do you think I am, a fucking addict?”  
Well, he had drugs for free.   
He left the coat over the couch and turned around to face his parents. “Look, I really don’t know what you are talking about.”  
“And I really do know that you’re lying.” The man said, moving a step closer to Harry and looking bigger and scarier in his eyes. “Your mother and I haven’t spent it, and we know it wasn’t your sister, plus you are the only one that causes trouble in this fucking house.”  
Harry considered on blaming Bree, but felt horrible only by thinking about it.  
“What if it was a thief? There are lots of poor people around here. Even poorer than us.”   
“Yeah, and they took 200 pounds when there were 1,000.”  
“What if they only needed 200 pounds and not 1,000?”  
The man’s nostrils got bigger as he took a deep breath. “What do you think I am, an idiot?”  
Harry sat on the couch and nodded. “Sometimes, yeah.”  
“Enough!”  
And right after he said that, he gave his own son a harsh slap on the left cheek.   
He hadn’t ever hit him, not even a gentle slap when he was a child and had bad behavior, but that time he flew off the handle and slapped Harry so hard he thought he might have ripped his skin. Harry immediately threw his own hands to rub his hurt cheek and looked up to his parents.   
The man was still looking rough and his heavy breath was erratic though he had a concerned look in his eyes, a guilty look. On the contrary, his mother was a few steps behind and had both of his hands cover her mouth, eyes wide. In the back, resting her head against the doorframe, his sister was crying.   
Harry got up slowly and gave his parents a glance full of disgust. “It’s me who’s had enough.”  
With that he walked away up to his room, his little sister grabbing him by the shirt, but he made a sharp movement to get rid of her, causing the girl to whine. Harry didn’t really care in that moment –though he might had-, he was too mad to even think, the slap on his cheek burning and remembering him how much he wanted to get out that place.   
And that’s what he was going to do; he went upstairs to his room and started to pack his things up. He forgot the door open, so his sister quickly entered the room and grabbed him again, this time by his arm, pleading him to listen to her.   
Harry looked down at his sister and his heart sank for a second. “I’m sorry you had to see that, Bree. This is not about you.”  
“What are you doing?” Her voice was broken. “Where are you going?”  
“I’m going to Zayn’s house. I can’t stay here anymore.”  
“Are you leaving the house?”  
Harry nodded. “Yeah, baby. I’m sorry.”  
“For how long?” She looked scared. Harry didn’t say anything. “Harry, please, answer me.”  
He closed his baggage and hung it on his shoulder.   
“I don’t know, Bree.”  
With that last sentence he kissed his sister’s forehead and hugged her tight, promising her that he would call -even though he wouldn’t. Then, he left her there, sitting on his bed, and went downstairs, where his mother was crying as well and his father was looking through the window. He looked at both of them and opened the front door.  
“Where are you going?” His father said when he heard the door open.   
“Away from you.” Harry replied, facing him.  
“If you leave now I won’t let you come back.”  
His mother whined.  
“Goodbye, then.” 

Zayn was watching the sky turn pink through the window and his dad made dinner when the bell rang. He got up slowly, stretching his body, and walked to open the door.  
He smiled at first when he saw Harry, but frowned when he noticed his rough face and the baggage on the floor.   
“What’s wrong?”  
“Can I come in?”  
Zayn nodded. “Sure.”   
When Harry entered the house, Zayn’s father saw him and his lips drew a wide smile. He approached Harry and hugged him tight, nailing his bones in the boy’s torso.   
“Harry!” He cheered. “Are you staying for dinner?”  
“Only if you want me to.” He smiled, looking shyly at both of them.  
“Of course we do! We owe you our lives. Zayn told me everything; you are an actual angel, Harry. Obviously, we will return the money to you as soon as we can.” The man said, and looked down at his baggage. “Is that a suitcase? You can stay as long as you want. This is your house.”  
That made Harry feel a little less torn, and he glanced at Zayn, who understood and drove him to the living room, where they sat next to each other.   
Zayn waited for Harry to speak, and eventually he did, he told him everything in a whisper since his anger wasn’t there anymore, now he only felt sad and lonely, like a homeless boy, he said, like a boy that everybody has forgotten about.   
“But you are not lonely, Harry.” Zayn replied in the same low voice. “Remember that night I told you about those moments when I feel lonely and sad, and you told me that I had you? You have me as well, Harry. You will never be alone…”  
“Thank you, Zayn. For letting me stay here and for… everything, basically.”  
“Ah, don’t thank me. I love having you here.” Zayn smirked. “It sounds selfish, but I wish you wouldn’t come back home ever again.”  
Harry laughed softly and took Zayn’s hand in his, gently rubbing it with his thumb. “I guess home is wherever you are, right?”  
Zayn’s naughty smirk turned into a sweet smile and he moved closer, resting his temple on his shoulder and wanting to kiss him, but he was aware by the fact that his father was in the kitchen and could come in anytime.   
“I really want to kiss you right now.” Zayn murmured.   
“So do it.” Harry murmured back.   
Zayn removed his head from Harry’s shoulder and smiled, looking at him in the eyes. He gently placed one hand over his cheek and was about to kiss him -his heart starting to beat so fast he felt ashamed- when his dad walked in. They pushed away quickly and looked at him, feeling a strange and exciting sensation inside them.  
“Hey, boys. I made dinner.”   
Dinner was a sandwich for each one of them and a beer, but Harry felt happy anyway. Zayn’s father sat on the floor and started to eat, speaking at the same time, very exalted, and Harry noticed that he had took drugs -probably cocaine- just before he came in.  
However, the way he spoke and the way he treated both of them was way different from Harry’s father. He wasn’t prepotent, he didn’t make any of them feel uncomfortable or thought he was superior to them. He was even caring and funny. He was natural, crazy and sick, but natural. 

As the night turned deep and fatigue overtook them, they went to sleep. Harry would sleep on the couch, he said, looking at Zayn in the eyes, but he was too tired to understand and went to sleep with a slow nod.   
However, in the middle of the night, a thud woke Zayn up. He groaned, in that point where you’re both asleep and awake, and covered himself with the quilt, turning around to lie on his side. He was definitely not going to check what that sound was and went back to sleep when he felt a heavy weight slip inside his bed, slowly, pressing its warmness against him.   
“I was really cold and uncomfortable on the couch.” He heard Harry whisper. “Can I stay here with you?”  
Zayn spoke with his eyes closed. “Aha. Sure.”  
“Great.”  
Harry smiled happily, making his eyes look little and causing wrinkles to appear over his cheeks, and covered himself with the quilt as well. Zayn’s bed was quite narrow so he lied on his side too, pressing his chest to Zayn’s back, and noticing that he wasn’t wearing any t-shirt.   
Zayn was very asleep, but Harry was wide awake and biting his lips, considering what to do. He matched his own breathing to Zayn’s and felt nice as their bodies moved in sink, their legs fitting as well, and now his hips were pressed to Zayn’s lower back, making Harry bit on his lips harder.   
Zayn was so asleep, so peaceably asleep, that Harry didn’t even want to wake him up. He wanted to watch him as the moonlight made his dark skin glow at some points and his long eyelashes look longer, infinite, mixing with the darkness of the room. He wanted to stare at his thin lips move in his sleep and his eyebrows frown inside a deep dream.   
However, his body didn’t have the patience to stare at him all night, it needed something else. It needed a little touch, soft rubs over his back, Zayn’s lips pressed against his, the tingle of his eyelashes over his neck as he sucked on it. He wanted to run his hand along Zayn’s chest and abs, feel the goosebumps as he did it, see him close his eyes and take a deep breath…  
So he did. Harry rounded Zayn’s torso with one arm and started to draw circles over his chest with one of his fingers, causing the boy to churn underneath the covers.  
“Harry…”  
“Yeah…”  
But Zayn didn’t answer, so he kept rubbing his chest with his five pads and slowly travelled down, delineating his abs until he reached his V-line and grazed the outline of his sweatpants, where Zayn took Harry’s hand in his and intertwined their fingers, pulling both of their hands up to his chest, safe and chained.  
“It’s been a long day.” He said, heavily. “Sleep.”  
But Harry didn’t give up and nibbled on Zayn’s ear.  
“My dad’s next door.”  
“I’m not loud.” Harry whispered to Zayn’s ear, making him shiver. “Are you, though?”  
Zayn’s hand held Harry’s tighter as he felt him trying to release it, causing the curly boy to smirk in the dark and lick his lower lip, ending it on a bite that landed over Zayn’s neck, making him gasp in surprise, pain and pleasure. Then, Harry started to suck on it and Zayn moaned softly, releasing Harry’s hand and placing it on his head, fingers rubbing through his curls and gently directing Harry to the spot that sent shivers to his spine.   
Harry started to caress his torso again. “Do you want me to stop now?”  
Zayn shook his head weakly and let Harry’s hand travel back to his V-line, teasing the elastic rubber of his sweatpants. Harry was feeling himself harden and moved down to Zayn’s ass, up to his lower back, then down and up again, rubbing his hips against the breathless boy.   
Eventually, Harry left the elastic rubber and pressed his hand against Zayn’s crotch, finding his balls and squeezing them as he bit on his neck at the same time, causing the boy to groan maybe too loud.  
“Wasn’t your dad next door?” He teased, a smirk recognizable on his voice.   
“Shit.” Zayn hissed, lengthening the ‘S’ through clenched teeth, and opened his eyes to look at Harry, forcing him to kiss his lips by tugging on his curls. “God, I wish you were mine.”  
Harry spoke through the kiss, biting Zayn’s mouth. “I am yours.”  
“Nah, you’re Michelle’s. I know you can’t be mine. Maybe if I wasn’t me, and you weren’t you…”  
“I said I’m yours.” And bit on Zayn’s jawline this time. “Michelle is a lie.”  
Zayn loved those moments when they made out and Harry got violent and rough all of a sudden, feeling a harsh kind of passion overwhelm his body, and he had to bite on Zayn and press their bodies tight and sink his nails into his skin or he’d go crazy, feeling a strong need of Zayn everywhere -along his skin but also deep inside his soul, lighting the dark path to his heart.  
“I am yours, Zayn…” He kept saying through kisses and closed eyes. “I have always been, but I never knew.”  
Zayn stopped the kiss sharply and looked at him. “What do you mean?”  
If the lights would have been on, Zayn would have seen Harry’s cheeks turn pink along with his belly –because when you blush your stomach does too, and it’s such a cute thing that everybody should be sad they hardly ever get to see it-, but it was too dark to even notice the strange glow in his eyes.   
“I mean I’ve loved you since I met you but I haven’t noticed until now.”  
Zayn blinked twice. He knew it wasn’t the kind of love they spoke about the night before. “Is that true?”  
“Yeah, completely true.”  
Zayn smiled and kissed him slowly, one hand over his cheek as his pads rubbed behind his ear.   
“Do you feel the same?” Harry asked insecurely, and Zayn giggled at the fact that he turned from rough to shy so easily, with a couple of words, and smiled because he loved the both sides. However, his laugh made Harry confused. “What does that mean?”  
“That means I do.”  
Harry smiled back at Zayn and bumped gently his nose to the boy’s, then kissed him again, still spooning. As long as the kiss lasted it felt like that horrible day hadn’t happened, like Zayn’s brother didn’t come home asking for the money, like none tried to hurt Harry, like he had no fight with his parents… It felt like they had been like that all day, next to each other, kissing and whispering.   
Harry started to rub his torso again through the kiss, teasing him over the fabric with his pads.   
“You know what?” Zayn panted, and Harry looked at him with wondering eyes. “This secrecy bullshit makes me really horny.”  
Harry smirked. “Yeah?”  
Zayn licked the boy’s lips before answering in a dark whisper. “Yeah.”   
Harry’s laugh was low when he took off his own pants by lifting his hips up and made the boy do the same, sneaking his hand underneath the quilt and rubbing it over Zayn’s ass, suddenly slipping a finger inside of him, causing the boy to gasp and look up at Harry.  
He looked back at Zayn and smirked, nodding. “Yeah.”, he said again.  
That night they made love slowly but hard; long, powerful thrusts and ‘Sh, sh, sh, sh’, fingers intertwined and breathless kisses, sweat and skin everywhere and ‘You need to be quiet now’, fixed eyes and matching breathings, biting their lips to fight back the moans and whispering words into each others ear’s, looking for the holy words in each touch, in each thrust, in each breath and kiss and…  
“Tell me you’re happy, Harry. Tell me you’ll never get used to this.”  
And he said he had never been happier in his life, and he said he could never get used to it, because the nights were made for saying the things you cant say during the day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please, please, please comment or leave kudos!!  
> I really appreciate it!!


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the way I wrote this chapter, I think I had the idea in my mind but was very busy so I couldn't capture it very good.  
> Anyway, hope you like it!  
> Things are going to an end...

Chapter 15.  
It is hard to understand how a teenager’s mind works.  
They say bullying is the worst thing you can do to a person, but they mock the chubby boy in glasses in their class. They say they want respect, but upload almost naked pictures on the Internet -and then complain because people laugh at them. They say they are unique, but act following social rules and fashion. They pretend they don’t care about what people say, but cry when they think none sees them. They say they are open-minded, but buzz and look with disgust at homosexuals.  
“Your brother is a faggot!” The kid was laughing, pushing Bree by her shoulders. “That’s why he doesn’t come to school anymore, because he’s scared people will know that he’s a faggot!”  
“Shut up, you don’t know anything, shut up!”  
But the kid, along with his bunch of friends, kept laughing at her. They kept saying that his brother was disgusting, and that she was as well because she lived with him. They even pushed her to the floor as she cried and nobody did anything, partly because they were scared, partly because they didn’t care.  
It was true, though, that Harry hadn’t gone to school in two weeks. Nobody, not even her, knew anything about where he or Zayn were. He said he would call, she told herself almost every night, but he hadn’t. Because he’s a liar, she kept telling herself, a selfish liar. She had considered about going to Zayn’s house, where he definitely was, but her parents had stopped her from doing it.  
 _“You can’t go to that neighbourhood.” Her dad said. “Your brother will come back soon.”_  
 _“But when is soon?”_  
Her dad never replied.  
Her mom went to sleep every night crying, but her dad never replied or shared a tear or even changed his facial expression.  
The boys kept laughing at her when Tony walked by, looking at them from the corner of his eyes.  
“Tony! Please!” She cried.  
However, Tony didn’t stop walking. He glanced at her with sorry in his eyes, but kept walking while looking to the floor. He was a little black kid, one of those kids who never open their mouths and who boys like those made fun of.  
That made Bree sob harder, sitting on the floor with her hands on her face as she tried not to hear the laughs and insults of the kids. But, eventually, the yells stopped and she opened her eyes to see an amazingly beautiful girl standing in front of her, with her hands over her hips and a tough look.  
“What the fuck are you doing?” She said, turning back to look at the hypnotized kids. “A bunch of boys making fun of a girl? You are disgusting. Come on, leave!”  
And the confused kids did, running away from that pretty woman that looked like she could turn into a monster anytime and rip their heads off with her thick lips. She squatted in front of Bree and smiled politely.  
“Are you ok, sweetheart?”  
Bree sniffed. “I’m alright.”  
The girl with the long dark hair offered her a hand and helped Bree get up.  
She knew her. Her name was Michelle, and she was one of the most popular girls in there. Not because she was nice, or because she was funny, not even because she was so beautiful it was even scary, but because she had fucked almost all of the school; both boys and girls. But none laughed at her calling her a lesbian…  
“You are Harry’s sister, right?”  
Bree nodded. Yeah, she has also heard that she’s been going out with her brother, kinda. She wondered if someone who’s gay can also date girls, and concluded that they can if the girl is as pretty as she was.  
“Do you know where he is?”  
“He left home two weeks ago.” She murmured, looking down. “He argued with my parents and said he’s had enough, picked up his stuff and left… He said he’d go to Zayn’s house.”  
“Zayn’s house, yeah?” Michelle said, mostly to herself. “He isn’t answering my phone calls.”  
“Neither mine.”  
They walked in silence for a while, and Bree noticed that everybody around them -they were at the school break- was looking at them. At Michelle, actually. Boys had wide eyes and girls shot her jealous glances, and Bree wondered if it didn’t make her uncomfortable. She looked up to the girl, completely unaware of the sights and murmurs around her, and knew she didn’t give a damn. She wished she was Michelle.  
“You know what, Bree?” She smiled again, looking at the blond girl. “That’s your name, right? Bree.”  
Bree nodded. “Yeah.”  
“Alright. So, Bree, you tell me where Zayn lives and I’ll go there to talk to your brother. I’ll try to make him reason and call you back, and maybe even come back home… Ok?”  
The girl nodded again, and Michelle shared another polite smile, but her face turned cold when she thought Bree wasn’t looking anymore. That was when she decided she wouldn’t like to be like Michelle, she said to herself; there was something bad inside her that made Bree keep the distances.  
Anyway, she was desperate to see her brother again, so she agreed the deal. 

_Ding, dong,_ Harry heard while he was in the living room, sitting on the couch with Zayn’s head resting on his lap. He looked down at his friend and saw him peacefully asleep, even snoring gently, and decided to go answer himself since Zayn’s dad wasn’t there either.  
 _Ding, dong,_ again, more vividly. He got up trying not to wake Zayn up -because he was a demon whenever someone woke him up- and walked towards the door quickly.  
 _Ding_ , then _dong,_ like that, separately and long, insistent.  
“Fuck, I’m coming, I’m coming.” He opened the door. “Michelle?”  
“Do you have a second?”  
“Yeah, yeah sure… You want to come in?”  
Michelle looked over Harry’s shoulder and shook her head, deciding it was better to speak outside. So Harry, fearing the worst kind of news, closed the door behind him and stepped down the three stairs of the front door, joining Michelle at the sidewalk.  
She was having a smoke, and Harry noticed that she was annoyed. Maybe not angry, or sad, or upset, but annoyed. Like she didn’t want to be there, like that was a business she wasn’t used to: talking to someone.  
“How did get here?”  
“Your little sister told me the address. Plus people talk.”  
Harry frowned. “What do they say?”  
“They say you’re living with Zayn Malik because you two are gay and dating.”  
She said that like she was reciting the shopping list. Something inside Harry’s bowels twitched.  
So The Twins had actually told everybody…  
“Do they say that?”  
“Yeah.” She took a drag. “And they were teasing your sister about that today during the break. She was on the floor, crying.”  
That thing that ached inside Harry’s stomach now went up to his throat and made him want to throw up. His heart beat harder and the color on his face faded. He felt cold sweat running down his spine.  
“What?”  
Michelle looked at him. “Your fucking little sister was crying on the floor because a bunch of boys were bugging her about you being gay. What the fuck is wrong with you today, Harry? You only make bloody questions.”  
“That’s maybe, just maybe, because I’m freaking out.” He replied immediately, looking as mad as Michelle. “Who says I’m gay? I just had a fight with my parents and came to live here for a while.”  
She chuckled. “I don’t care, Harry. The thing is, I don’t want you to keep laughing at me. I guess you know I’m fucking other guys while I’m hanging out with you, right? And the only thing I want to know is if you are also fucking other _guys_.”  
“The fact that I’m sleeping here doesn’t mean I’m fucking Zayn’s ass.”  
Michelle gave the last drag to the cigarette and dropped it to the floor, smashing it with her foot.  
“Sure. Should have guessed that.” She nodded ironically. “I’m done with you anyway. This is over.”  
Harry looked at her coldly. “There was never a ‘this’.”  
Michelle chuckled and gave him a last wry smile. “Faggot.”  
He clenched his jaws and fisted his hands, containing the anger going through his veins. He had heard that word so many times, he had called people -or even himself- that word so many times he thought it wasn’t even an insult. But hearing it in Michelle’s voice, with such disgust… It even brought tears to his eyes. It made him feel like a monster, like some kind of sick creature, just because he loved someone he wasn’t supposed to.  
Harry was supposed to like women, he was supposed to like slim waists and breasts and the taste of lipstick on his tongue, but who said he _had_ to like that? Who said that he was meant to like men or women? He simply loved Zayn. A person. No matter if he was a boy or a girl.  
Was he a monster because of that?  
When Michelle faded he turned around, throwing his hands to the back of his head and sinking his nails on the flesh, pulling his hair so hard he thought he’d tear it.  
He walked back to the front door and gave one of the flowerpots a kick, making it fall and crash against the floor, scattering all the soil to the ground. He felt sorry for a moment, but the flowers were already dead, frozen, so he just sat down on the first stair and buried his face in his hands, waiting for those thoughts in his mind to disappear.  
However, the sound woke Zayn up and he opened the door, finding Harry there.  
“Harry? What happened?”  
He cleared up his throat. “The pot broke.”  
“Yeah, I can see it…”  
Harry didn’t reply. Zayn stepped in front of him, warming up his naked arms with his hands.  
“Are we going to the riot tonight?”  
There were riots again, a few neighbourhoods away from theirs.  
“No, I’m not going.”  
Zayn frowned. “Why not?”  
“I promised my sister I wouldn’t go to any other ever again.”  
“Well… We can go to that gangs thing then.”  
“No, Zayn.” He looked up at him for the first time. “I’m not going anywhere with you tonight.”  
Zayn laughed, confused. “What do you mean?”  
“I mean I’m coming back home.”  
Zayn’s smile disappeared and he blinked twice, without understanding. They were perfectly fine two hours ago, but suddenly… He gave a gentle kick to the broken pot and looked at Harry again.  
“Why?”  
“Because people are talking about us.” Harry said, glancing at him intensely. “The Twins told everybody that we are together.”  
Zayn looked at him for a few seconds and then shook his head. “So what? Aren’t we?”  
“Zayn, boys in school are bullying my sister because I’m gay. I promised her I’d call her. I’ve been ignoring her phone calls during two weeks. And my parents’.”  
He took a deep breath and then chuckled, feeling the world spin around himself. He wasn’t cold anymore. He was burning.  
Harry was doing it again, acting like nothing happened. Like everything they had done during those two weeks living together was playing the X-Box -which Zayn didn’t even have- instead of having sex in secret, talking through whispers, shooting sights to each other when his dad was around. Again, Harry erased every single word he had said with a simple finger snap.  
Zayn was fuming.  
“So this was just fun for you, wasn’t it? You like this as long as you can go back home afterwards and play happy fucking families. Well, fuck you then.”  
Harry was staring at him with an incredulous glance in his eyes. He got up and approached Zayn, pushing on his chest before saying,  
“This is easy for you, isn’t it, Zayn? You can do whatever you want, and you know why?” He was speaking inches away from him. They looked to each other’s eyes for a second. “Because nobody fucking cares about you. Nobody gives a damn about what you do.”  
Zayn’s heart stopped. Zayn’s heart stopped and he feared it wouldn’t beat anymore -or maybe he wished it didn’t-, because what Harry said was what was always on his mind, remembering him that he was nothing, that there wasn’t anything he could do to get anybody’s attention, to make anybody care a little bit about what he felt, or if he hurt himself, or if he was scared to be alone.  
And Harry saw it in his eyes, how the amazing shine in them slowly faded, like a weak candlelight at the end of a party. And he wanted to apologize because he didn’t mean it, because he actually cared about him so much it hurt him, because he wanted to know if he was scared to be alone, and what he felt, and he wanted to stop him from hurting himself.  
But Zayn didn’t let him speak, he entered the house and slammed the door shut, leaving Harry there, knocking on the door and yelling his name, begging for sorry.  
Eventually, Zayn opened the door and Harry drew a little smile, but Zayn answered with a harsh face. He dropped all of Harry’s clothes and his suitcase to the floor, pushing it away from him with one foot. Harry looked down at them and whimpered.  
“Zayn, I…”  
But he cut him off. “I don’t want to see you around here anymore. I think I’ve had enough too.”  
“Zayn, please listen to me.”  
“Leave.” He traced every letter with the utmost contempt he could get. “Leave before I punch your fucking teeth out of your fucking mouth.”  
Harry nodded, fighting the tears in his eyes, and squatted to pick up the clothes from the floor.  
Without saying anything else, Zayn shut the door in front of Harry and gave it a harsh punch, sinking the wood and making the almost healed wounds on his knuckles bleed again. Harry, outside, heard it and shut his eyes hard, hanging his suitcase on his shoulder and starting to walk away.  
Inside the house, Zayn had slipped his back down the door and was sitting on the floor, crying with his eyes shut hard as he held his bleeding hand and wished for the pain to stop, both outside and inside.  
Everybody leaves, he told himself.  
Everybody leaves eventually.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please, please, please leave kudos or comment!!  
> Thanks for reading. :)


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this chapter is so short, but it's kind of an introduction to the last one (+ the epilogue).   
> I hope you like it!! :)

Chapter 16.  
Sometimes, fate laughs at you. It messes and muddles and don’t want to put together two people that die to be next to each other.   
Sometimes, fate leaves a thousand promises behind. It makes deaf a heartbeat that none but those two people can hear and scratches a blind scar inside them, where everybody can see.  
Sometimes, you ask fate for happiness and it gives you rejection. And that’s what hurts the most.

It was only Tuesday in Harry’s room, but things were difficult already as his mind wandered through those thoughts. It had been almost a week since the last time he saw Zayn, and it wasn’t like he missed him, but like he needed him to be there. He was desperate to tell Zayn that he was sorry, but those words…  
 _“I don’t want to see you around here anymore. Leave. Leave before I punch your fucking teeth out of your fucking mouth.”_  
Harry’s body folded in half as he felt the weight of those words fall hard on his stomach again, just like the first time he heard them. Two thick tears rolled down his cheeks and he didn’t notice, or he didn’t bother to wipe his eyes -he considered he deserved those tears- and let his back fall on the mattress, looking up to the ceiling as several tears wetted the pillow. His mind was dancing around the memories of the last two weeks together, all the kisses and jokes and racing heartbeats and he tested for the first time that it’s possible to laugh and cry at the same time, and that you feel even sadder when it happens.   
Ah, how much he missed him…  
“Harry, may I come in?”  
He wiped his eyes quickly and sat up on his bed. “Yeah.”  
Bree sneaked her head inside Harry’s bedroom and her eyes wandered around the untidy room until they met with Harry’s, and them both smiled.   
“What’s up, babe?”  
“I just wanted to talk to you for a while.”  
“Sure. Come here.”   
In Harry’s eyes, the girl looked smaller and blonder that day, like she was 2 years younger than she was supposed to be. She looked sad as well, so he held her in his arms and hugged her tight, swinging her amazingly little body and pressing his lips to the top of her head. And she closed her eyes and let him do, let him warm her body and make her feel a little love.  
“I miss you.” She said in a tiny voice.  
“I’m here.” Harry replied, smiling. “I’m right here, can’t you see?”  
She shook her head. “No, you’re not. You’re somewhere else and I really want to know where is that place.”  
Harry didn’t say anything, but his arms rounded her closer and pressed her back tighter to his chest, making sure she wouldn’t see him cry.  
“Since you came back home you spend the entire day here, always sleeping or simply lying on the bed. You either eat anything. Your eyes are always swollen. You don’t talk to Mom or Dad or even me.” She sighed long. “I am worried, Harry.”  
“I’m sorry, honey.”  
Harry tried to sound calm down, but his voice crackled and a soft sob came out from his throat, causing Bree to turn around and look up at him. She frowned and Harry smiled, feeling again that weird sensation you get when you are sad and try to act like you’re fine.   
“This is nothing about you or Mom or Dad, Bree.”  
“Is it about Zayn?”   
Harry nodded. “Yeah. It’s about Zayn.”  
“So it’s true. That you and Zayn are…”  
“I guess so.”  
Harry smiled and caressed the girl’s cheek, looking into her blue eyes. She held his sight and searched for his hand on her side, grabbing it and intertwining their fingers.   
“Would you tell Mom and Dad?”   
She shook her head, then gave his hand a little squeeze. “Your secret is safe with me.”  
“Thanks, Bree. You are my guardian angel.”   
She giggled softly and pressed her lips to Harry’s jawline, kissing a tear and tasting the salt and sadness of the boy. Then, she turned around again and rested her head on his chest, closing her eyes and slowly falling asleep over him, his low breath lulling her. 

 

Zayn, however, just came back home from a very long day. He had been pretending he was at class after his dad went crazy and yelled at him and told him that he wouldn’t be anything in his life if he kept skipping school; but the thing is that Zayn didn’t really want to be anything -it reminded him too much of his brother- so, for six hours, he had been on the street smoking and walking and having too much time to think. But then, when he finally could go back home, he didn’t want to.   
Zayn has always felt safe out in the streets, like the big buildings protected him with its columns and the light that shed the windows were enough for him to see at night. He never felt like he had a place called home, instead, those streets saw him grow up as he walked by them.   
But, eventually, he had to come back to what ‘reality’ meant to him, and it was an empty house with death and violence and drugs.  
“Dad, are you home?”  
None answered.   
However, there was a half eaten sandwich over the kitchen table. Zayn gave it a bite and frowned; it was still warm. So he asked again,  
“Dad, are you here?”  
Zayn opened his dad’s room but there was none inside, neither on his own bedroom or on the bathroom. There was one room left on the house where he hadn’t entered, and it was the basement, where his father kept all the narcotics and substances he’d sell.   
He went to his dad’s bedroom, where he hid the key, but didn’t find it there.  
And it could only mean one thing…  
“Shit.”  
He grabbed a long knife from the kitchen and approached the door slowly, feeling his heartbeat increase and his hand sweating the handle.  
“Get out there!” He yelled to what he thought that was a thief. “Get out there or I’ll go in and kill you!”  
He wasn’t expecting to get any response, but he did. It was a weak, low and painful response, but it was his dad’s voice.  
“Zayn…”  
“Dad? Are you there?” He asked, louder this time. “Dad, open the door!”  
But he didn’t. Zayn heard a thud and groans of pain, and his mind went blind and felt dizzy. His father was there and someone or something was hurting him, so he kicked the door repeatedly until it slammed open and he ran downstairs, turning on the light and finding his father on the floor with his eyes closed and making nonsense noises.  
Zayn squatted next to him. “What happened, Dad?”  
As he didn’t reply, he looked around themselves and saw and empty bottle of pills and an another one, dropped on the floor, and understood it all.   
“Where you… Dad, where you trying to…?” He felt dizzy again and his hands started to shake. “Okay, okay Dad, I’m going to get you out of here and you’ll have to throw up everything you took, alright?”   
And he lifted his father’s body and hung him over his shoulder and back as the man struggled.   
“No…No…Let me die, Zayn…Please, let me die…”  
He ignored his words and fought back the tears as he went upstairs with the weight of his dad on the back –luckily, he was very thin- and reached the bathroom. Zayn dropped him there, next to the tube, and spoke to him again, telling him not to fall asleep as he tried to keep him still and make him throw up.  
And he finally did, he threw up everything he had taken as Zayn sat on the toilet with his hands covering his face so he wouldn’t see his own tears reflected on the mirror. And when his dad finally breathed and rested his back on the cold wall of the bathroom, Zayn helped him get up and dragged him to the bedroom, laying him on the bed.   
“Why did you do that?” He asked in a whisper, and sat on his knees next to his father, with both arms over the bed. “Why would you want to die?”  
“I can’t take care of you… I’m not man enough to do anything… I don’t want to keep living with this fear…” He spoke with a tired and breathless voice. “No, I can’t…”  
Zayn stayed there, kneeling on the floor, until his father fell asleep. He watched him for a long hour, but he wasn’t seeing him. His mind was somewhere else, going deep inside his old memories when his mother was alive and Brad wasn’t such an asshole and his father was crazy, but not insane. When they were a lame family, but still a family, and you could see his parents kiss randomly just because they still liked each other and his brother would bug him just to have fun. But they had always been addicts, both his father and mother, and one time… One time she took too much and died, convulsing, in front of her husband and two children.   
Zayn got up as that image tortured him and he cleaned the bathroom like an automaton, with nothing inside his eyes and no expression on his face.   
However, when he had finally finished cleaning the mess, he sat on the couch and his whole body broke, all the feelings and muscles he had had in tension were now tired and sad, and he let out everything, feeling as lonely as ever, remembering how Harry said that none, absolutely none, gave a fuck about what he did or felt.   
And he considered calling him and telling him that he promised something, that he said he wouldn’t feel lonely ever again, but instead, he cried until he was too tired to have his eyes open and fell asleep, having long and awful nightmares all night.  
When the sun rose he got up and went to class, not very ready to see Harry again but not willing to stay there all day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please please please leave kudos or comment!


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LAST CHAPTER!!! Oh my God, so its is -almost- over. :')  
> I have posted TWO chapters today, so if you haven't noticed, **please read chapter 16 first.**  
>  Read it and pleaaaaaaaaaase tell me your opinion!!

Chapter 17.  
“Zayn, please, stop.”  
He heard it behind him, seconds later he walked past by Harry without even looking at him. However, he stopped.  
“We need to talk.”  
Zayn didn’t turn around. “No, we don’t.”  
The school day was over and they were at the door; Harry had waited for him to get out. Nobody was there anymore, just an alley cat that was looking at them fixedly as Zayn lighted a cigarette and let the smoke fly away with the cold wind.  
“You can’t ignore me just like that.”  
“Speaks the one who always acts like nothing had happened.”  
“Zayn…”  
And the boy turned around to look at him, but Harry’s mouth didn’t open.  
“Stop saying my name if you don’t have nothing to add afterwards. It really bothers me.”  
“Shit, mate, I just don’t know what to say, alright?” He approached Zayn and stepped right in front of him. “I know you hate me now and I deserve it for what I said, but I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean it, Zayn. You know I didn’t, right?”  
Harry tried to move his hands up to Zayn’s face but he stopped him, grabbing both of his wrists and shaking his head.  
“I really don’t know what to think.”  
Harry looked away and cursed lowly, feeling Zayn’s hands burn his wrists. “I have spent this entire day watching your fucking ass walk past by me and having to fight back the urge of pushing you against a wall and kiss you and then tell you that I’m so damn sorry for what I said that it hurts, but I know I can’t because I made the most stupid mistake ever, Zayn: I lied to you. I said nobody cares about you, but you know what? I do care. I promise I do, Zayn, I…”  
“I thought about calling you last night.” He cut Harry off. “After my dad tried to commit suicide.”  
Harry’s eyes widened. “What?”  
“You said I wasn’t alone, you said I had you, but when I felt the worst… I knew I couldn’t call you.” Zayn’s eyes were blurry now, and it made Harry feel a punch in his stomach. “You know how did that made me feel? I bloody wanted to go down to the basement and swallow all the fucking pills that my dad hadn’t.”  
“No.”  
Zayn released Harry’s wrists and hid his hands on his pockets, smiling in a very sad way.  
“I love you, Harry, but I know I can’t trust you.”  
And with that Zayn walked away, leaving Harry there, watching Zayn fade away as the boy had done with Harry plenty of times, but this one it was different: Zayn didn’t turn around and smile just before disappearing.  
“Does it mean this is over?” He asked, but he got no answer. Zayn wasn’t there anymore. “No, this is not over…”

But Zayn had decided it was the end. He had decided it was going to be his last year there; he’d move when he turned 18 and start a new life, didn’t know how, but he knew he would.  
And as he entered the house he didn’t know his new life would start just that day, and not the way he wanted it.  
“Dad?” He asked, a bit scared he would get no answer again. “I’m home.”  
But he heard the voice of his father calling. “I’m here, son. Come to your bedroom.”  
When he reached his bedroom he saw him sitting on his bed with three suitcases next to him. He was looking at his son with severe eyes, which made Zayn confused.  
“What is this?”  
“This is your luggage.” He said slowly. “You are leaving this house tomorrow.”  
Zayn chuckled incredulous. “What you mean?”  
“I’ve called your brother, Zayn. We’re sending you to that boarding school.”  
“No, no, no, Dad, no. That’s not a boarding school, Dad, it’s a fucking reformatory. No, I’m not going there, call Brad back. Tell him I’m not going. Please, Dad, tell him I’m not going.”  
Zayn was panicking. He grabbed the suitcases and opened them, getting out all the stuff his father had put in them while he kept saying he wouldn’t go there, he didn’t want to go there, he wasn’t going to go there. But his father said there was no way back; he said it’d be the best for everybody.  
“I can’t keep taking care of you, Zayn, I can’t even take care of myself. You’ll be better off there.”  
“No.” Zayn said, tears of anger flooding his eyes. “I have to stay with you. You tried to kill yourself just last night, you can’t live alone, you…”  
“Zayn, I’ll be alright.” He smiled, and the boy noticed he also had tears in his eyes. “I won’t try to hurt myself ever again, I promise.”  
“Dad…”  
Zayn was on his knees on the floor, all of his clothes dropped around himself, as he felt everything crumble down. He wasn’t ready to say goodbye, he still had something to do, he still had to say to Harry that it wasn’t over, that he lied too, but…  
“I’m leaving for tonight, I need to go to speak to your brother and finish all the papers to send you there.” He said, looking down at Zayn. “We will be back tomorrow morning. Is that ok, Zayn?”  
The boy nodded but didn’t move a muscle when his father patted his head as a goodbye. He didn’t move a muscle, actually, for a couple of hours. He only crawled up to his bed and lied there, looking up to the ceiling and letting the sadness take over him because there wasn’t anything that mattered anymore. He felt empty, not a single drop of joy left inside him, and wondered if that’s what you feel when you’re dead, if you feel in that stage where nothing matters because you don’t have nothing to lose, and you feel dead because _you are_. And for a while he felt some kind of peace inside his body, but that peace, a cold and hard peace, scared him, reminding him that he was alive, and that was when he heard the doorbell ring and Harry’s shouts and knocks on the door.  
“Zayn, stop ignoring me, I know you are in there, please, open the goddamn door. I won’t leave until you open it, I’m telling you.”  
He walked slowly to the door as he felt that peace dissipate and the desperate sadness take over again, so when he opened it and saw Harry standing there he couldn’t fight back the tears.  
Harry immediately held him in is arms and stroked his back gently. “Zayn…”  
“I’m really confused without you.” He said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do anymore.”  
Harry moved his hands up to Zayn’s face and cupped his cheeks, looking into the boy’s eyes and smiling, and kissed each one of Zayn’s teardrops slowly, like it was a holy ritual. The boy calmed down as he did it and closed his eyes, murmuring words that Harry couldn’t hear, but he pressed his lips to his eyelids gently and made him shush.  
“You don’t need to worry, Zayn, I’m right here. You can trust me. I’m sorry for what I said and did. I love you.”  
But Zayn shook his head. “You don’t understand it. My brother and my dad are sending me to that reformatory. I’m leaving tomorrow.”  
“What?” Harry’s voice shook. “You are leaving tomorrow? For how long?”  
“Five months I guess. Until summer. Then I’ll have to work for my brother in the city.”  
Harry frowned and walked away, sitting on the couch. Zayn followed his steps with his sight and stared at him run his hands through his hair and shut the eyes hard to stop the tears.  
“Does it mean I’m not able to see you again?”  
Zayn nodded. “Not until Summer. And I guess I won’t have much time after it.”  
Harry shook his head and laughed softly but it turned into a sob, and suddenly he couldn’t fight back the tears. His shoulders started to shake gently and he covered his eyes with his hand, ashamed. He felt like a stupid and selfish kid, crying because he couldn’t see someone in five months when that person was going to have it even harder.  
“But you can’t leave me here. I’ll go crazy.” He said. “They can’t tear us apart just like that.”  
And in Zayn’s eyes he also looked like a little kid, but not a stupid and selfish one, but a sad and helpless kid that felt as if someone had tore away the only source of love and happiness he had in his life.  
Zayn sat next to Harry and watched his tears fall over the carpet, making round dots of a darker color over it.  
“I don’t want to leave either.” He said in a whisper. “But I can’t do anything.”  
Harry looked up at him and a crackled smile showed on his lips. “We could run away together.”  
Zayn laughed softly. “And have everybody looking for us?”  
“We can hide. We can live in a hole or a sewer, I don’t care.”  
And Zayn laughed again because he noticed that Harry was being serious. He caressed his left cheek with one hand and blinked slowly.  
“But I care about your health and I don’t want you to live in a sewer. And I really need you to be by my side, but your family does as well, specially your sister. You understand that?”  
Harry nodded. “Yeah.”  
“Nice.”  
Zayn got closer to Harry, slowly moving to sit right by his side, and took Harry by his chin, making him look at him. For a while, Zayn got lost inside the deep green, and Harry counted the stars inside the melting brown.  
“Tomorrow morning I won’t be here anymore; you will be on your own and me too, for five months. I know you will miss me, and I will do too, but you have to promise me you’ll wait for me. I’m not asking you not to date other people, you can do it, but please don’t forget me, because I won’t forget you.”  
“Like I could ever forget you, even if I wanted to …”  
“Please promise me you won’t forget about me, Harry.”  
Harry stared at him and clenched his jaws. “I swear I will never forget you, Zayn fucking Malik, in my whole life.”  
Harry tried to sound rough but his voice was broken, making Zayn smile and nod, resting his forehead against Harry’s and closing his eyes. The curly boy, slowly, pressed his lips against Zayn’s, kissing him after too long.  
But again, he felt the same. He felt like that light Zayn was keeping inside him magnified his heart, which stopped pumping blood long time ago because Zayn was what flowed through his veins, and the image of their first kiss, that messy and confused kiss, came to his mind, making him wonder how did it all end up like that when it started out with a simple kiss, but then he realized: _All the big things start out with a kiss._  
And I guess kisses not only have the power of creating great things such as love, but they also have the power of making you feel exactly what the other one is feeling; they have the power of connecting two people so deeply it sometimes gives them an electro shock and they have to pull away, scared.  
And that was exactly what happened, both Harry and Zayn were feeling exactly the same thing, and Zayn wanted to say thank you, he wanted to thank Harry for having the audacity of letting him know that he was beautiful when he was the worst kind of disaster, for pulling when he pushed, or healing when he bled; for hugging when he wept or kissing when he yelled. He had to thank him for being so relentless and never give up on him when he was so undeserving.  
But he needed no words. That’s another attribute of a kiss: you can say everything you want to through it. So Zayn said thank you and Harry said he didn’t have to, because ha had done the same to him. That’s why it felt so nice, that’s why it felt so balanced, because none of them owed anything to the other one but, at the same time, they owed everything. I think that’s called symbiosis.  
Yeah, what Zayn Malik and Harry Styles had was symbiosis -which has a dark side, the side where they literally can’t handle life without the other, but I’m not going to get into that stuff- and it felt perfectly fine.  
And through whispers Harry said “Let me undress you for the last time” and Zayn did, he helped Harry undress himself and closed his eyes as he kissed everywhere; he pressed his lips in places that Zayn wouldn’t have noticed that he had if it wasn’t for Harry, and he murmured that he hated himself for not having the guts to run away with him, and Harry made him shush with a kiss on the lips, a sweet kiss with eyes close and slow matching breathings.  
And now Zayn was undressing Harry, looking for the wings in his back, but then he noticed that he didn’t need them to be an angel, because he had everything in his eyes. He had all the words he had never said inside them, all the feelings he had never confessed and all the fears he had been hiding. And Zayn told him to let them out, let him know all of his secrets and he did, with no words again, simply by touching Zayn’s body and kissing it and pounding inside him, he confessed everything by making love to him.  
They spent the rest of the day there, at Zayn’s house, making love everywhere and sharing their secrets until the sun went down and fatigue overtook them, so they laid in bed next to each other and closed their eyes.  
“I don’t want to say goodbye to you, Zayn.”  
“You don’t have to.” He answered. “We can act like we’re going to see each other tomorrow, in class.”  
“I’d like that.”  
With that, Harry rounded Zayn’s body with one arm and they fell asleep, the warmness of each other lulling them. 

Hours later, the sun in their faces woke them up, and they stretched their bodies and shook away the sleep from their eyes.  
“What time is it?” Zayn asked.  
“Seven in the morning.”  
“My dad and Brad will be back soon.”  
Harry nodded, understanding, and got up. Zayn, however, stayed in bed and watched him put his clothes on again, feeling a warm tear meet the pillow. When Harry turned around to look at him he noticed his swollen eyes, but acted like he hadn’t and smiled big.  
“I’m leaving now.” He said, and leaned forward to approach Zayn. “See you later?”  
Zayn nodded. “See you later.”  
But what they said didn’t match to the kiss that followed; because it was a goodbye kiss, one of those kisses that make you miss the person already, a sweet kiss that brings back all the memories and makes you wonder why do goodbyes even exist.  
And once again, and maybe for the last time, Zayn watched Harry walk away from him, turning around and smiling before disappearing in those black jeans and black boots.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DON'T FORGET THAT THERE IS AN EPILOGUE LEFT!!  
> Thanks for reading. :D


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AAAALRIGHT, so I have posted two chapters today and this is the epilogue, so if you haven't noticed please **read chapter 16 and 17 before reading this**.
> 
> AND YES, this is the end of Bleeding Knuckles and I really enjoyed writing it sooo so much. Thanks a lot if you have read it and I hope you liked it as much as I did.  
> Enjoy the epilogue!!

Epilogue.  
Zayn woke up with the morning light and breathed deep, stretching his still asleep body. He yawned and turned around, hoping to see Harry there, lying next to him inside the covers, but he only found an empty space. For a moment, his heart went crazy and his eyes widened, until he felt the bedside still warm from his body and guessed Harry just woke up and was wandering around the empty house, so he got up as well and looked for him.  
It had been such a long time since the last time him and Harry met, more than five months, but Zayn was finally out of the reformatory and Harry had travelled to London after lots of arguments with his parents to let him go.   
_“Zayn, Zayn, hello. It’s been so long…” Harry said as he kissed him._  
 _Zayn smiled. “But we saw each other yesterday, in class, don’t you remember?”_  
But they were finally together; Harry arrived just the night before and they went clubbing, then end up in Brad’s house, trying not to wake him up.

Zayn found him outside, at the balcony, and decided not to disturb him. Instead, he stared at him for a while.  
Harry only had a light sheet around his hips to cover him, one hand over his waist to hold the sheet on as the other one rested on the railing, his naked torso slightly leaned forward to look down at the people walking by the street. His shoulders moved up and down slowly as he breathed, and his bare back had drawings from sleeping on the folds of the sheets.  
Zayn thought he could watch the heavy moves of Harry’s shoulders all day, but the house was old and when he rested his side on the doorframe the wood crackled, catching Harry’s attention and causing him to turn around.  
“Zayn!” He smiled. Zayn had never seen him as attractive as in that morning under the sunlight. “Good morning. Come here, this is nice.”  
Zayn approached him by behind and rounded his torso with both of his arms, kissing under his jawline. Then, he rested his chin on Harry’s shoulder.  
“Where’s Brad?”  
“He’s at work. He always wakes up at six in the morning and doesn’t come back until 12 at night.” Zayn smiled and let his breathing tingle in Harry’s neck. “We are alone.”  
Harry shivered when he heard those three words.  
“I have missed you so much, Zayn.”  
“I know, me too. You have no idea…”  
Harry smiled. “But we are together again, yeah?”  
Zayn pecked his lips and pulled away gently, stepping next to him to look down to the street as well, watching the people walking by, talking relaxed, laughing; two kids running after their dog, a couple kissing against a gate, an old man having trouble to cross the busy road, a bunch of teenage girls chatting lively…  
“None seems lonely here.” Harry said, remembering the conversation they had months ago.  
“I really hope so.” Zayn whispered.  
Then, his eyes travelled up to the houses, to the windows, to be precise, and watched through them -the lit TVs, some coffee cups abandoned over a breakfast table, a girl doing her homework-, his eyes entered each house until they reached his, and stopped in Harry.  
His head was slightly turned up to the clean sky, his face enjoying the morning sun with eyes closed. His lips were curved into a satisfied smile, making the dimples on his cheeks very pronounced. He had wrinkles on the corner of his eyes that made Zayn want to kiss his cheek. And he did, causing Harry to come back to Earth.  
“I needed the sun.” He explained, like he was sorry for not paying attention to Zayn. “It feels incredible after months of rain and clouds, doesn’t it?”  
“Yeah, it does, actually.”  
Harry smiled and leaned forward, resting his forearms on the railing.  
“It seems like you made it, huh? You said you wanted to run away from your house and that neighbourhood and… Now you live here, in the center of London. It’s amazing…”  
Zayn looked at him as he was still watching the street and smiled.  
“Well, yeah, I kind of made it. I was obliged to, but I guess you’re right.” And then, he added, “You know what’s the best bit about all of this?”  
“The malls?”  
Zayn laughed and shook his head. “Get to share it with you.”  
Harry looked back at Zayn and turned around to kiss him on the lips, his heart jolting as he felt his mouth again and tasted the alcohol from last night mixed with a love that had been stored for too long but didn’t smell musty. Instead, it smelt like the promise of endless summer nights with a couple of beers and long kisses, sitting at the terrace of a bar humming songs and counting the stars.  
“So, what are we going to do now?”  
Zayn thought long about it, but then he shrugged.  
“I don’t know. We still have an entire summer to think about it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please, tell me what you think. :D


End file.
